Videos
The Push and Pull of Fear and Trust on Innovation
Transcript Productivity Alberta: How important is trust to innovation? Robert Porter Lynch: Fear and trust are absolutely essential to understanding the whole nature of what innovations programs are about. When you do the research virtually no one talks about the issue of trust when it comes to innovation. Do I trust the people that I am working with? Do I trust the process that I’m engaged in? Do I trust the that I’ll be taken care of after this innovation project is over. It’s something you can’t just bury but unfortunately most people don’t talk about trust because they don’t understand what it’s really about. Until we understand what trust is about it’s a great fuzzy hole, people abandon it and they go to something that they consider is more clear. My mission in life is to take this trust thing and turn it from fuzzy wuzzy into something that has a design, architecture, a science, strategy and best practices behind it. PA: So what does the science behind trust say? RPL: You first have to understand how the brain responds to an interaction with other people and with a leader. There’s neurochemistry in the brain that’s involved here and most people are going to say “Why do I need to know about neurochemistry. That’s too complicated for me.” I’m going to make it very simple First of all, every human being on the planet has four drives. Those four drives are very simple and there’s a simple pneumonic device to remember them. A - Acquire B – Bond C - Create D – Defend Everyone of us has these built into our brains through millions of years of evolution. What ends up happening is that if you feel that innovation is threatening you then your drive to defend will create adrenaline. That will shut off the drives to create, acquire and bond with other people. The drive to bond is the drive to collaborate. The drive to create is innovation. The drive to acquire is to focus on a goal. Every leader wants to do those things. If you have too much fear in the system people shut down. They retract, they withdraw. A leader who’s leading any kind of innovation effort needs to understand how those dynamics work. They’re really not that complicated, they’re pretty simple. But if you don’t think of it in those terms. You can demand innovation, you can forcefully push your ideas but all you’re doing is making it more difficult for innovation to occur. PA: What do great leaders do to use these drives and foster innovation? RPL: A great leader, to get the results they want, has to acknowledge that fear is not the way to do it. If you go down that path you’re in trouble. The first thing you want to do is to get people to feel safe and secure. You want them to know that there’s a win-win out of this. You have to answer two questions “What’s in it for me and what’s in the greater good for the whole company?” If you can’t answer those questions and people don’t feel safe in what they’re doing you won’t move towards the innovative system that you want. The third thing you need to do is to get people to abide by the adage that people support what they help create. The other thing is to understand the issue of threats. If threats are perceived to be internal to the organization or team then I’ll start to withdraw and protect myself. If the threats are considered external to the organization or team the mind is perfectly capable of deciding that’s than an outdoor threat and we will work together internally to defeat it. Now there are threats on the horizon for Alberta right now. This is the first boom where a country like China is going to be very involved. They are going to see the boom to their advantage and they’re going to try and compete. And it isn’t going to be with low prices, the Chinese are very innovative. Every Albertan should be aware that there is a new set of rules to the game here and if we’re not competitive we’re going to squander the boom.
