Category: change

business, change, creativity, education, innovation, work

On innovation: flaws in the process

Christa Avampato

Bruce Nussbaum, who writes the design blog for Business Week, recently published a post on what he sees as the greatest innovation mistakes made by companies. He references a study that was done by three large consulting firms that uncovered how companies that are widely-considered as top innovators actually go about the innovation process. What they found is astounding: most innovation happens by accident and most of the people inside the company achieve innovations by being contrarians and working against the systems in place.

While all of the mistakes are critical to keep in mind when we are engaged in attempting to be innovative, the number one reason that Nussbaum points out is the most important when we are considering whether or not to join a company: CEO sloth. While people within a company that live at the bottom of the food chain can drive innovation up through the ranks, corporate gravity is against them. If a CEO is inherently an innovative person who values ideas and opinions from people on the fringes of the organization, then innovation and innovators have a greater shot at success. Corporate leaders must be committed to walking the innovation talk and opening their wallets in support of the process.

A lot of new graduates crave jobs in “strategy” and to be honest, the universities that educate them are not doing them justice in this department. Here’s what the universities aren’t telling them: Every job worth your time has a strategy and everyone at an organization must consider themselves to be creatives, to be innovators. No organization is going to welcome in a new graduate and think that their ideas are the most brilliant ones ever spouted, even if they are. New ideas are absorbed in bits and pieces and it takes patience, time, and commitment to have them heard by the highest levels of a company. A word to the wise: spend your job search time finding a boss who supports your efforts of creativity, and make sure that person has the ears of the people who control the purse strings. And understand that innovation is a long and winding road.

To read Bruce Nussbaum’s full article, visit http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/12/top_ten_innovat.html.

career, change, work

Before jumping off the train

Christa Avampato

Patience is the companion of wisdom. ~ St. Augustine

Without a doubt, frustration abounds in the retail world this holiday season. Sales are down for most companies, as is morale within these companies. I have a few friends who are working in turn-around situations, and the potentially rocky economy is causing them some angst. In an agitated state, it sometimes seems easier to jump ship than hang around waiting for the other shoe to inevitably drop.

I can confidently say that several times in my career I have lacked patience, mostly because I did not have the wisdom of experience on my side. Simply, I didn’t know what I didn’t know and as a result when the tough times got going, I did too. While I don’t regret my decisions because I am thrilled with the life I have today, there are times when I wonder how things would have turned out if I had waited out the unpleasant times a bit longer.

Patience is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to hang onto once we have it. We begin to look around anxiously for a new and “better” opportunity. We feel we’re spinning our wheels, wasting time. Life is passing us by on the express and we’re on the local. The tug of frustration beckons us to move on when the picture in front of us is less than rosy. Rather than dashing out the door, sometimes it is worthwhile to consider riding out the wave to see where it carries us.

business, career, change, creativity, dreams, happiness, work

The Natural Order

Christa Avampato

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” ~ Epictetus,Greek philosopher

It’s easier to formulate actions than it is to really get at the core of the motivation and then develop actions that support that core. I’m not sure why. Maybe it can be likened to eating a hot bowl of pasta – easier to twirl around the edges and work in than to plunge right into the steamy center. And yet, the few times when I start out on the fringes and work my way in, I end up realizing that I spent too much energy on the edges when I should have dove right in. And when I have jumped in with both feet, even if I got burned, I learned a tremendous amount and had no regrets.

I considered this as I read about Paul Potts, a British cell phone salesman who at his heart was an opera singer. He finally got his chance to do what we loved on an episode of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Though, imagine what would have happened if not for reality TV. How many other Paul Pottses are out there who “die with the music still in them” as John Lennon would say. Was it that they didn’t know their core and spent their lives on the fringes of their potential or was it that they were actually afraid of their callings and spent their lives running from destiny?

This is good food for thought as I consider the hours of my day when I’m happiest and what I have to do to make those activities the predominant way I spend my time. I have also found that in crafting a business case for my own company, I also must start at the core. Yes, I will make mistakes and I will get a burn or two or ten. It’s worth the risk – I’d rather end up bumped and bruised than wishing I had sung the song I was meant to sing.

business, career, change, creativity, discovery, dreams, experience, Google, innovation, society, technology

Get your head in the clouds

Christa Avampato

I spend about 8 hours on my computer, and roughly 10% of that time belongs to some Google application. I stand in awe of a system that can pull up exactly what I’m looking for, regardless of how obscure the subject, in a fraction of a second. Until today, I had resigned myself to the fact that there was some magic Google elf pulling the info for me. I have confirmed that not only is there an elf, there could actually be a million of them out there in the Googlesphere, known increasingly as a “cloud”.

While it focuses on Google and one engineer’s story, Business Week’s cover story this week talks broadly about how our information world is increasingly being built upon this idea of clouds, a group of hundreds of thousands of computers that are all bolted together to store massive quantities of data. While many companies are struggling this holiday season to stay afloat, Google is contemplating world domination of information. Their mantra can be described as “Whatever you can dream, dream it bigger.” Imagine being at a company that tells you you’re wildest dreams are too small, and that you need to formulate projects that are far more outlandish than even your wildest expectations.

There is a lesson in this wild dream making: every dream can be broken down into very small pieces that can be handled by individual “cloud elves” and then aggregated to get you exactly to where you need to be, all in about half a second. And there is no finite number of tasks. The possibilities are truly endless.

While many companies are in the mode of tempering expectations, pulling in spending, and plummeting morale this holiday season, Google is doing the exact opposite. They are determined to fly high and make sense of the massive amount of knowledge out there. They are so optimistic about what they are capable of accomplishing that they feel these clouds may ultimately push the limits of human imagination. Talk about a tipping point! We have been told for centuries that the human imagination is the most powerful tool on Earth – is it possible that when we pool our imaginations together, we can build something larger than our own sense of creativity?

One last astonishing thing about Google. In all of its success and dreaming, they maintain a public humility that is staggering. They are absolutely fearless when it comes to failure so long as there is learning involved. Their CEO, arguably one of the most powerful and wealthiest men on the planet, sits in a cubicle and moves around from building to building so as to interact with different people at all levels of the organization. And he responds to emails from people at all levels at a unbelievable rate. He is respectful of people’s time, both on and off the job. With someone like this at the helm, it’s no wonder that Google believes in defying limits.

The Business Week article can be found at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_52/b4064048925836.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories

The picture above can be found at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/07_52/B4064magazine.htm

change, innovation, work

Workarounds

Christa Avampato

Everyday we create workarounds, conventions that help us get through the day by literally working around difficulties. Most of the time it’s safe to assume that these adjustments we make are simply things we must do get through the day, to get our jobs done, to take care of our family and friends. “Everyone does it,” we tell ourselves.

Workaround get tough when they become the default action, when we do them because it’s easier to create workarounds than it is to fix the problem that’s causing the workaround in the first place. May take a little more time, a little more money, but if we can avoid conflict, we’ll do it. No matter how confrontational people may be, it’s in our nature to avoid situations and actions that cause harm.

The problem with developing and fostering these conventions is that there is no progress in that. If a system is broken and we create a method to deal with what’s busted rather than fixing it, we get stuck. It’s as if we cannot move past this short-term solution. And then the system proceeds to get broken further until it’s so bad that we need to develop a workaround for our workaround.

One of my past employers had board meetings several times a year, scheduled well in advance. There was no process in place for preparing for these meetings. Without fail each time it was absolute mayhem scraping it all together. Everyone would end up completely frazzled, hating each other, pointing fingers at who should have done this and who should have done that. Then a few weeks would go by, follow-up would fall through the cracks, and in a few months time, the vicious cycle would repeat itself. Everyone involved developed their own workarounds to just “get by” because there was no leadership anywhere in the line. No one owned outcomes, so no one owned the process.

This isn’t just a workplace phenomena. We can apply it to our holiday shopping patterns, our summer vacation planning (or lack there of). School assignments. Our nagging to do lists. That home repair we keep meaning to make. Workaround have a nasty habit of making friends with passive aggressive behavior and procrastination, mounting into the perfect storm. Once we get used to doing workarounds, we feel we deserve some sort of recognition for our how hard we’re working and the extra care we’re taking to get our jobs done, despite the fact that the system we’re compensating for is riddled with problems.

Now think about this – channel all of the energy and effort we put into workarounds into actually fixing the system, once, so we don’t have to keep repeating the workaround and so that we can move forward. High anxiety. Discomfort. Short-term losses of some variety. Sure. Any system or process, in order to be designed right and function properly, has to take the long view.

I know that many times fixing what’s broken is more difficult than just stepping over it for now. I know it’s tough; I know you don’t want to do it because you don’t have enough time right now, nor enough money, energy, or patience. Get it done. Systems and processes don’t fix themselves; they won’t go away just because you ignore them. Eventually they will rear their ugly heads and better to deal with them while they’re small and contained rather than have to fix them once they’ve created a gangly mess down the road. Daley Carnegie said “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” Just make sure what the things you’re doing will add value, real value, down the road.

change, happiness, New York

On NYC: What gets rewarded

Christa Avampato

NYC is a tough place to live. On the surface it may appear to be all fun and games. It’s not – this city and living in it is serious stuff, not for the faint of heart. People manage it in all different ways – after thinking they can hack it in the thick of it all, they grow tired and weak. Some move to a new borough, or a new state if it’s really bad. They get new roommates, a new job, new friends, new hobbies. They cry, scream, join a gym. Some just hide under the covers hoping tomorrow they will wake up in a more polite, less crowded, quieter NYC, only to be disappointed that overnight the city seems to have grown more rude, more crowded, and nosier.

And don’t forget how damn expensive it is to live here! I won’t even tell you what I pay in rent – it’s horrifying, and I have the best deal in town. I recently went to Disney World for the day with my sister, Weez, and brother-in-law, Kyle. (They live near Orlando.) You know you’ve lived in NYC too long when you think the prices for Walt Disney World concessions are cheap.

So what’s a girl to do? I’ve tried all of the strategies I listed above. I have had horrible roommates, and even more horrible bosses in years past. I tried to moving to a borough, and several other states. I got new friends, and saved my good old ones too. I’ve tried new hobbies, volunteering. I’m quite adept at hiding under the covers, and I consider myself to be an expert screamer and crier when the tension gets too much. I have never joined a gym here – I put initiation fees on par with broker fees. “Oh, please, let me give you an outrageous sum of money to have the right to pay you an even greater sum of money on a monthly basis for the privilege of being in your presence.” No thanks – I’ll take to running on the streets of NYC.

The best remedy I’ve found for surviving and ultimately coming to love NYC – keep showing up. Truly. Falling in love with this city is a long, slow, and very painful process. It takes deep commitment. It plays hard to get better than all of us combined. And it wins every time. The harder you fight its freakish, bizarre happenings, the more it will throw at you.

And then one day you turn the corner to your apartment, or fly over Manhattan to land at one of the city’s airports, and you realize there is no place in the world like your New York. You meet good people. You find that dream job. You nurture and develop hobbies that complete you. Sometimes it takes a few tries – it took me 3. And now I know I could never call another place home. It’s true that if you can make it here, you make it anywhere. Trouble is that once you’ve made it here, you’ll have a hard time wanting to make it anywhere else – you fought too hard to make this work. And just when you’re ready to throw in the towel, it relents. Anything worth having is worth fighting for, right?
change, travel

Travels: Delta Rising

Christa Avampato

Delta is a remarkably consistent airline – consistently horrible. As a general rule, I avoid their flights completely. This could be because I associate Delta with Atlanta, GA, my least favorite city in the country. Until recently, I have put Delta in the same class as Sleepy’s, the 7 train, and reckless bicycle riders on the streets of New York City, all of which I have ranted about on this blog in previous posts.

Times change, views change, and improvement does happen. I flew Delta to Florida this weekend to see my little sister and brother-in-law, and to throw a baby shower for them. And for the first time ever, my flight left a New York City airport on time and arrived in Tampa, FL 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The same situation was repeated on my return trip.

Now, I am still a bit peeved with Delta because they told me a ticket I changed was good for a year from the date of the originally scheduled flight time and it was actually good for a year form the date I made the change – a difference of a month that rendered that original ticket useless when I was booking my recent flight to Florida. Annoying. Really annoying.

But hey, you’ve got to take the bitter with the better. Improvement is a piece-meal process. Delta may be on the path to getting off my bad side. I’m open to changing my opinion – rare, but it happens.

change, Darden, experience, family, graduation, grandmother, happiness

A Sense of Place

Christa Avampato

A Sense of Place

May 20th would have been my grandmother’s 88th birthday so my Darden graduation on that date has a dual-significance for me: it is the celebration of my greatest academic accomplishment and of a woman whom I consider to be my greatest teacher. She was born Sarah Louise Gagliardi, though I knew her as Sadie Lupinacci. She was born to blue collar immigrant parents on Barber Street in Hartford, Connecticut. She was a life-long employee of Traveler’s Insurance Company. She had two children: my mother, Sandy, and my uncle, Tom. She was married to my grandfather, Alfonso Lupinacci, for over 40 years until his untimely death in 1982. They were childhood sweethearts and grew up around the corner from one another. She led an ordinary life. Nothing extravagant. Nothing extraordinary.

Yet she was an extraordinary person – the kindest, most loving person I have ever known. She had a remarkable sense of forgiveness and an endless supply of support for those she loved. When anyone asks me what kind of person I aspire to be, I consider that I wish to love and be loved the way my grandmother was, and still is. She came from so little, and I have so much which is why I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for the opportunity to be a part of this community and this graduating class.

I came to Darden to attain traditional financial skills because that was a clear hole in my resume. This was the explicit learning. While I was able to reach this goal, there were implicit learnings that I did not expect to find which are just as valuable, if not more. I learned about the idea of lifting as we rise, that there is so much more satisfaction in climbing the ladder with people we admire and care about along aside us rather than climbing over others and being alone.

I spent a lot of time here considering the idea of happiness, of accomplishment. Defining it, setting benchmarks, reflecting on what’s working in my life and what’s not, and then taking on the responsibility to change, even when that change is painful or frightening. And I am continually reminded of the idea that what we wish to have in our own lives we set about attaining by providing that very thing for someone else. So if it is happiness we seek, we can begin to have it by providing happiness for another. The same goes for success, personal and professional, for peace of mind, for friendship, and, as my grandmother showed me, for love.

I learned how devastating it can be to think I’m on a road that I built going one way, and all of a sudden the bottom falls out and I end up on a path I never knew existed and probably would not have chosen by my own volition. Surprisingly, I learned to love the new road, and even became grateful that the Universe presented it to me. Resiliency and the ability to see possibility in all opportunities are great blessings that I found here.

And most importantly, I learned about the power of place. I have a friend who talks about the metaphor of a great vein of life running just beneath the Earth’s surface. Sometimes we come upon physical places that have special significance though we cannot pinpoint the underlying reason for that feeling. She says that at those points, the vein of life emerges for us to grab a hold of and experience an intensity of emotion that we do not find in the course of our everyday lives. The places where the vein emerges makes us feel alive; make us feel connected to one another and at cause with the world around us. Darden has been one of those places for me, and I hope it has been for everyone who has the privilege to call this beautiful place home, even just for a little while. I look forward to returning again and again in the years to come, and I am so excited to see how our lives unfold, intertwine, and connect.