In my last post I noted that we are hard wired to be emotional.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how peoples emotions form barriers in their life and to the people around them. Our genetic personality and experiences from a very young age shape these barriers to define who we are. We all have areas where those barriers are negotiable, and not too painful to change or remove. And we all have areas where those barriers are rigid, where we are unwavering in our commitment. Changing them would require great pain as they are a major construct of our identity. We feel like we lose a sense of ourselves. In fact, in most cases, we take pride in them. They define who we are and give us purpose.
However, I am starting to believe that the same identity driven emotional barriers are also the exact thing that prevents us from success when tackling big challenges. Good barriers and bad ones. This applies broadly in a corporate environments when trying to be innovative. Some may react negatively to this point and say this isn’t so or that they don’t see it. In my experience, the naysayers are also usually the ones that have drawn the most rigid emotional barriers. They have constructed false blinders that don’t allow them to see other peoples emotional barriers or see how their blinders affect everyone else.
The result of these barriers is usually that you personally stagnate, or worse, fail completely. But even worse is that those around you also fail to. An impasse is reached. There is a lack of alignment on a pressing problem. The team fails to act in a manner that reflects the challenge at hand.
I don’t think people realize how often this happens. In the design and business world, I see people up against the emotional barriers that define their identity DAILY. And even in environments most would agree are functional ones, even innovative, there is a critical lack of alignment of action that ultimately shackles the initiative. People aren’t truly listening to each other, discussing the opportunities and risks, adjusting plans and shifting their thinking. They are working in silo’s, within their emotional barriers, expressing their identity to the detriment of everyone.
But that only worked in the old economy, where work was more of an operations challenge instead of a strategy or innovation challenge. An operative environment rewarded the individual working in their silo (with few errors, of course). The new economy has challenges that require collaboration on a new level.
I am quickly coming to the opinion that we need to address a problem, that we need an emotional transformation to be able to deal with the challenges of the 21st century. We need to operate at a higher emotional level. We need to understand ourselves and be willing to operate in a zone close to the fringes of our emotional barriers without shutting down and returning to our identity driven silos.
And I believe that pioneering design strategy models that integrate relationship theory, particularly love relationship theories, could help facilitate the process. Where else are you going to go for answers on how to deal with peoples emotional barriers?
More sporadic blogs to come on this.
I listened to a speech a few weeks ago at a charity event for the American Blind Association by Mike May, who co-wrote his own biography titled Crashing Through. He himself is blind. Through his determination and spirit, he overcame his disability and pioneered a variety of new products for the blind. In addition, he had several other notable accomplishments like the world record for blind speed skiing and the invention of modern blind ski racing techniques (racers follow their lead skier instead of lead them). He is truly a remarkable and inspiring person.
Most of the great companies studied by Collins/Porras were founded in a period of great technological advancement. Great engineering outputs were a strategic advantage. Opportunities for growth were created by simply enabling the average person to do what they couldn’t have done before through technology. And you could be successful even if it required some user challenges (think of a hand crank starter for a car…)
Lets take an example. Say you manufacture an LCD touch screen film. The first thing worth noting is that there is a person, or persons, present for every purchasing decision on your product’s path to the market. There is an end consumer that buys the integrated product. And there is a end product team of resources that evaluate, specify, purchase and assemble your component. The end consumer will ultimately determine the overall volume sold. But that volume is significantly influenced by the ability of the end product team to address the consumer’s needs. The end product team also determines which component suppliers get to participate. 