Joe Meersman

Full Transcript



Douglas Ferguson:

Hey there. This is Douglas Ferguson. I'm here with Karen Holst.



Karen Holst:

Hi, authors of Start Within.



Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, and this is our weekly go live session with an innovation doer. We do these every Friday just to highlight the awesome work that people are doing out there in the world. And most of them are readers of Start Within or applying the principles. Some just have found their way to this work themselves. And we're just celebrating our shared understanding and our love for this work.



So today we have Joe Meersman. Joe is the vice president of growth and strategy at Voltage Control and spent many years at IBM working on the design organization that they built out to great effect over the last decade. And so, Joe is no stranger to large organizations, and so excited to talk about some of the issues that come up and how we navigate and do our best work in the innovation landscape. So Joe, welcome to the show.



Joe Meersman:

Thanks for having me.



Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. So we were just talking about some of the challenges around innovation and where we need to focus. And so, I'd love to just go back there and hear some more of your thoughts.



Joe Meersman:

Absolutely. For me, when it comes to innovation in the context of a large corporation, we have a lot of well-meaning individuals that tend to act in silos, right? So it's more often than not a lot of really smart people are acting in good faith on some of the same problem spaces and thematically, I think what we see are similar solutions, but with varied degrees of outcome, because different people are able to maybe appeal to different audiences or different stakeholders with varying levels of effectiveness.



And in the work that I've been doing recently, I've seen a couple of different models of innovation play out. One is where innovation is more embedded in, or otherwise woven into the fabric of the corporate culture. In others, we have standalone innovation labs or innovation organizations, and in others we have a newer model of rotational labs, which I know a couple of different institutions are currently experimenting with.



So it's a really interesting confluence of factors that lead to what I would call enduring or sustained innovation versus a once in five years disruption.



Douglas Ferguson:

And yeah. So let's talk about some of the trade-offs between sustaining innovation versus disruptive, and how do we place the bets if someone has an idea that they want to push forward? Is that a useful way to categorize their idea and how our companies invested in one versus the other? This is all fascinating stuff to me.



Joe Meersman:

Sure. So for me, I think an objective definition of what innovation is is really, really important. And by that I mean to say that there's a difference between a big, three to five, five to seven, year horizon bend versus something that needs to be done. It's a safe innovation. So for instance, at a partner advisory board or at a customer advisory board, there's going to be a level of awareness of things that the market would demand, or that competitors are delivering on that need to be done. Right?



It's just a question of timeline versus something along the lines of an integration of an emerging technology, or a set of net new capabilities that could be either disruptive to the market or allow for disruption of an incumbent. And I think that that companies that do well on innovation are figuring out a way to either parallel path those two, or divide up the resources that are going to be required for delivery of either.



Douglas Ferguson:

Hmm. Interesting. I wanted to maybe double click on this notion of objective, and I think that it's important to quantify the work that we do because a lot of innovation tactics and whatnot tend to fall on the qualitative land, the generative land, the land of the novel, and let's be exploratory, but if we don't quantify, we don't measure, then that also gets us in trouble.



To quote the quote one of my heroes, Drucker said, "What gets measured gets managed." Right? And so, how do we manage innovation? What's the operations of innovation? So when you mentioned the objective, or making an objective, that really lit up some excitement for me.



Joe Meersman:

Well, I think that there are certain models that are more driven by an acceptable degree of loss tied to that the risk of allowing people white space and that freedom, right? So you have an 80/20 rule and that proportion, which I think Google and other large corporations are really comfortable with. And that level of comfort and that level of freedom comes with an environment where employees are empowered to have that drive. And in fact, it's baked into their core principles.



There are other companies that hedge a little bit with annual hackathons and things that, to me, feel a little bit more like well-orchestrated forced fun. Everybody gets a t-shirt and we're not mandated, but we're expected to form these multidisciplinary teams and work really, really hard for 18 hours straight. And the results of which are, it's questionable.



One or two things might come out of that that make for a nudge or maybe, if properly invested in, get spun up as its own product. But those, to me, seem a little less genuine. They are still a force for good, don't get me wrong. But I think that in certain cases, those are more for morale purposes than a genuine willingness to undertake that degree of risk.



Douglas Ferguson:

And so-



Joe Meersman:

The other thing-



Douglas Ferguson:

Go ahead.



Karen Holst:

Well, the other thing, just to add to that, I hear often is there are these moments where you have the opportunity to ideate and think about new ways of doing work, and then you spend time and effort into making those ideas become something, but going beyond that and actually moving outside of just the free time to do this innovation work and thinking, it's very difficult for companies to articulate what's allowed to move forward, what isn't, when there isn't a gated forced fun moment.



And I'm just curious on how you unlock that on teams. How do you encourage people to think that even when there's not a clear path forward, how do you embrace a mindset or tips or tricks to go beyond the ideation part and make these ideas happen within your company?



Joe Meersman:

Absolutely. I think within the context of a larger institution, it's really, really important to make sure that it's not a quote-unquote design-led effort, or it's a tech-led effort, or a product management-led effort. It needs to be multidisciplinary. And that doesn't mean that you need buy in at the highest level. That means that you need a representative from each of the constituent partners that are part of a team in order to march something forward or move something forward.



And the reason why I firmly believe so is that if it's seen by only being driven by one discipline, I don't think its chances for success are anywhere near as high as if it's a collaborative effort. I'll say, in addition to that, nothing works better than a pilot and nothing speaks better than a prototype. And it doesn't matter if the idea is really strong and you have a low fidelity prototype, or the idea is really weak and you have a high fidelity prototype, right?



You have to think about the context. You have to think about the audience. So I would say, to me, it's definitely more of a recipe than an equation that results in any meaningful innovation. So I think people have to think about audience, company size, as well as what the appetite and the willingness would be to move forward with a something.



Sometimes we need a paragraph, other times we need a prototype, but I would say that that if you want to increase your chances of success, working with partners outside of your discipline is going to help with that.



Douglas Ferguson:

And what have you found to be the best ways to identify the right partners and how to prioritize, or even how to sequence some of those conversations?



Joe Meersman:

To me, coming from the design perspective, I like to look for people that are willing to work differently, to take a chance. Anyone that has the interdisciplinary respect inside of an organization is a good person to go to, as opposed to someone that doesn't want to get out of their lane.



I think the notion, the traditional notion, of stay in your lane, only do the thing that we hired you to do is a bit outdated. And I feel like anybody that has a proclivity to steer out of their lane and that has a voice in a meeting that speaks up with a perspective that's influenced by or driven by data, I think is somebody that I really want to bring in and collaborate with.



Karen Holst:

I love that. I think the swim in your lane, we hear that often, and people that are early in their career are feeling that, right? Like, "I was hired to do this work.", and one place that I advise is rock out what you were hired to do. And then, you can start to veer out of your lane, right? If you start to lose trust or fail in what you were hired to do, then what gives you the permission to go beyond that?



And so, I love the idea of if you're established and in your career for a bit, you're probably, you're rocking out your day job, and so you can take on these extra side projects and opportunities.



Joe Meersman:

Yeah. I feel like when we veer outside of our lane, there's also the notion that it is monolithic, right? Any comments that I might make on product management, for instance, as a designer can be mistaken for completely veering out of my lane, when sometimes I'm just turning on the blinker and letting people know that I'm thinking outside of my lane, and other times I might veer across three lanes of traffic and get to that off ramp, in which case, I'm going to pivot my career, right? I'm going to go into a sibling discipline or I'm going to go all in and I'm going to take a stand on an issue that isn't traditionally associated with my discipline.



So I think, for me, thematically, it's objectivity over subjectivity. It's alignment, but it's also trying to make sure that things are categorized the right way and that we're clearly communicating what our intent, as well as what our interpretation of a goal and a mission statement are.



Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. That's interesting. Both the point around categorization and this notion of taking a point of view that's not usually the responsibility of your discipline. And I think that is pretty innovative in itself because if we discover connections to things and concepts that aren't typically in the purview of our discipline, that can be a difficult terrain to navigate, but it can lead to some really, truly transformative results because we're starting to explore uncharted territory.



And so, I'm curious if any stories come to mind there, or any words of wisdom that you can share around noticing that there's opportunity, it hasn't been done before, whether it's re-categorizing things or challenging the categories, or what have you.



Joe Meersman:

I think, for me, what's been really important is that, at least for me personally, not being overly dogmatic and process driven, I think is really important. And I understand that in large organizations, people tend to gravitate toward a process because it results in a repeatable outcome. That's a healthy thing. I understand that, right? You want to build a system there, but I'll say that some of the best work I've ever seen brings inspiration from the outside in and wants to constantly iterate and experiment with things.



And I think that the more we're open to outside ideas and the more that we embrace different ways of working and different approaches to delivery, we end up with varied results, but those are oftentimes better because they come packaged differently. And I would encourage anybody listening to this to take opportunities to shift their perspective and view things through a different lens.



Douglas Ferguson:

Excellent.



Karen Holst:

Yeah. That feels like a very timely comment in the moment that we're living in. So thank you for that.



Joe Meersman:

Absolutely.



Karen Holst:

Thank you for joining us today.



Douglas Ferguson:

Yes, thanks a bunch.



Joe Meersman:

Thanks for having me.



Douglas Ferguson:

It's been fun chatting.



Karen Holst:

For anyone that wants to check out our book, Start Within, you can find it on Amazon and you can find Joe, Douglas, and I all on LinkedIn and follow us for the work that we're doing.



And if you're a person who is doing this work, innovating within a company, a nonprofit, a government agency, and you want to share your stories with others so we can feel inspired and learn from you, reach out to Douglas and I. Thank you again for taking your time.



Joe Meersman:

Thanks for the opportunity.