I am fascinated by the blending of purpose of the bike described in the recent Fast Company post–This Ingenious Bike Doubles as its own Lock. The article points out that any bike lock is breakable with the right tools and amount of time, so the designers have developed a bike that partially comes apart to utilize the frame as the lock–breaking the lock/bike destroys the value of the bike, rendering it useless if stolen. What a brilliant idea. IDEO did this in their well documented development of a new shopping cart, that among other things, eliminating the desire to steal it,
What’s so interesting about this approach is the blending of purpose (of the bike and of the lock) to create a bike that is simultaneously a lock. There are clear implications to the blending of purpose in the realm of innovation. We saw this in recent years with the combining of Captchas–the security tool for signing into a website that requires you to retype the hard-to-read text (which humans and not computers can only read)–and projects to transform old books, magazines, newspapers or pamphlets into an accurate, searchable and easily sortable computer text file (used by the New York Times).
But beyond innovation–there is great value of this concept. I’ve taught and coached for years that one of the primary roles of a leader is to develop people through work. Many leaders struggle because the focus too much on being good managers, preoccupied with efficiency, cost reduction, customer service, etc. (all great and important aspects of business), and fail to make time to prioritize the development and growth of their staff (which should ultimately, if you have the right people, support desired results).
Earlier this year I worked with a regional manager of a financial servces o0rganization, who supervised several branches. One do his primary responsibilities was to approve complex loans. When I asked what his priority was when approving a loan, his response was, “to efficiently approve loans.” We discussed what this entailed, which emphasized suggestions to the loan officer, and a heavy use of a red pen. We then shifted the conversation to what it would look like if we tweaked his priority to, “to develop my staff while efficiently approving loans.” How would this look different? The conversation was fascinating. We discussed using each loan approval interaction as an opportunity, not to approve and pass a loan as fast as possible, but as an opportunity to coach, teach, and develop his staff. Taking the time to ask more questions and to discuss and explore options rather than simply providing solutions, takes time in the short-term, but, in the long-term this approach will develop and grow your employee base and ultimately help you as a leader better achieve your goals. Like with the bike and the lock, by combining the purpose of two previously separated events: a) loan approval, and b) coaching and developing, we end up with a better outcome–approved loans and better trained and empowered employees.
What processes or systems with differing purpose, are you doing separately, that might be combined?
Inciting Leaders 