About the Author: Bill Taylor
Co-founder of American magazine Fast Company, which focuses on technology, business and design, and author of three books on creativity, leadership and change. His latest book, Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways, is a bestseller that presents a series of test cases for innovative and groundbreaking solutions even in very traditional industries.
In times of disruption and uncertainty, the great challenge for individuals and organizations is to keep learning fast as the world changes: to analyze problems they have not encountered before, to understand the opportunities they have not thought of before, to process feelings they have not experienced before.
This is why managers need to encourage their peers to learn from experts in fields they have not worked in. Routine practices in one industry can be revolutionary as they migrate to another industry, especially if they challenge accepted perceptions in this industry. What better way to fuel your company’s imagination than to seek out-of-bounds inspiration? If you want to learn fast, learn from strangers.
In “Benchmarking for Best Practices,” Christopher A.’s Guide. Bogen and Michael J. English for Leadership and Organizational Learning, the researchers present a case study from business history that illustrates how accepted ideas from one field can quickly change another field. “In 1912, Henry Ford watched curiously as workers cut meat, during a tour of a slaughterhouse in Chicago,” Bogen and English write. “The chunks were hung on hooks installed along a rail. After each man performed his job, he pushed the chunk to the next station. When the tour was over, the guide said, ‘Well, sir, what do you think?’ Ford turned to the man and said, “Thank you, son, I think you may have given me a really good idea.” Less than half a year later, the world’s first production line began producing engine components at the Ford Highland Park plant. “
The connection between nurses and military veterans
One can also observe a recent case study. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described how a pastor at a busy Chicago hospital helped nurses cope with the mental and emotional burden of a coronary wave in Corona during the rise of the Omicron variant. The pastor, who was also a military veteran, “noticed that the phrases nurses used in conversations were similar to those he heard from soldiers who served in combat zones.” He then used concepts and techniques developed by the military to help soldiers deal with the trauma of war to formulate a plan that would help maintain the resilience of the nurses while waging war on the virus.
“He really could have created a parallel between us and military veterans,” one of the nurses admired. “I never made that connection, because as a nurse for 20 years in this unit I had never seen such an injury to our team. So when he made that connection, I said to myself, ‘God, how I never saw that connection.’
Not all foreign learning cases are so inspiring, but they can be effective. A few years ago, for example, the large children’s hospital on Ormond Street in London, known for treating heart disease, faced a process of transferring patients between stages of treatment that did not work well. Dr. Martin Elliott, head of cardiac surgery, and Dr. Alan Goldman, head of pediatric intensive care, researched experts from a completely different field, who were better than anyone at organizing complex dedications – the ground staff of Ferrari’s Formula 1 racing team.
The doctors and ground staff worked together at the team’s racing center in Italy, at the British Grand Prix and at the hospital’s operating room. Ground staff members were surprised at how cumbersome the hospital delivery process was, not to mention the fact that this process often lacked a clear leader (in Formula 1 racing, the “lollipop man” swings a stick that is hard to miss and is the person handing out instructions). Furthermore, they noted how noisy the process was. Ferrari ground crews operate mostly quietly, despite (or because of) the roars of the engines around them. Thanks to techniques learned from people outside their industry, the hospital redesigned its delivery practices and significantly reduced the number of medical errors.
A solution not only for specific problems
Learning foreigners does not always have to help deal with an unfamiliar situation or solve a specific problem. Colonel Dean Aserman, for example, during his tenure as police chief in Providence, Rhode Island, pushed his isolated department to open up in general to original ideas, fresh perspectives and new ways of thinking. One of his initiatives was a wonderfully creative program called “Cops and Documents.” Aserman’s detectives sat on a regular basis with doctors from Brown University School of Medicine while they discussed difficult cases. Detectives watched and listened as doctors analyzed clues from the patient (symptoms), sorted evidence (test results) and identified the culprit (illness).
In turn, doctors sat down at the police command meeting to learn how police officers deal with conflicting and confusing information, dismiss suspects and crack cases. Asserman’s goal was for his department to “become a place that embraces research, that understands and disseminates methodologies that work in the ways medical schools work.” In order for the detectives fixed in their perceptions to learn new perspectives on policing, their commander understood that they needed to learn from experts in a field unrelated to policing.
Where to look for new ideas
The chaos and crises of the past two years have flooded all sorts of questions for leaders and organizations. One of the biggest questions is: Do we have new ideas where to look for new ideas?
When it comes to innovation and problem solving, there will always be room for outdated and time-consuming research and development, but today there is also room for another type of R&D – imitation and duplication. The fastest way for organizations to understand the challenges they face for the first time is to Ideas that are already working.Why bet on strategies and insights that have not been tested if strategies and insights that have already been proven elsewhere can be quickly implemented? This way leaders can help their peers continue to learn fast as the world changes.
Three insights on learning from strangers
1. Especially in times of disruption and uncertainty, managers should encourage their peers to learn from fields foreign to them
2. Working alongside experts from various fields helps to get out of the mental fixation and perceptions accepted in our industry
3. A work routine in one industry can be revolutionary as it migrates to another industry