Experimentists inspire change

``He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things."

Picasso, on God as an artist

Question of the day:

Which type of boss would you rather work for?

A. Realist

B. Optimist

C. Pessimist

D. Skeptic

E. One who is all of the above

F. One who is none of the above.

Okay, so you know it's not going to be an easy answer, like ``A." You know that because you're reading this, not receiving it as televised brain anesthetic. And because we readers don't believe in easy answers, I'm going to make the case for both E and F. Yes, all and none.

First, anyone who's been around a great boss knows that he or she is: Enough of a Realist to understand the cruel realities of the free market, that a company must continually change and evolve or die; while being Pessimistic in the knowledge that most suggestions won't get implemented and if they do, won't work; and Skeptical of people who sell easy answers or to claim to know the outcomes; but is still sufficiently Optimistic to believe that the next great idea is right there, just out of sight, waiting to be spotted and snatched up, and that his or her team is the one that'll do it.

On the other hand, try to smush together all those ideas into a single rubric, and you get something like Optiskeptirealipess. So let's consider the case for ``none of the above," opting for a new designation that captures the mindset and personality of the person inspiring organizational change: the experimentist.

The best bosses in America are eager to try something new. Not just meet, not just plan, not just envision -- but to give it a shot, to play around, to make something happen. There is a world of difference between ``let's envision" and ``let's see."

Of the marketing ideas tested by the research firm QualPro, about one-quarter generated improvements, half made no difference, and one-quarter made things worse. These were all ideas that were considered good enough to research by teams at major, thriving corporations. (The stats are from ``Breakthrough Business Results with MVT," a book that deserves a discussion of its own, and that will happen soon.)

So, if 1 in 100 ideas gets tested, and of those, three-quarters don't help, you have to get awfully good at generating and experimenting with ideas. You can't be too optimistic, or you'll get yourself overcommitted to a single idea; you can't get too pessimistic, or you'll bog down in the ``odds are it won't work" logic; but you'd better be realistically skeptical of the organization, or it will find a way to keep doing exactly what it's been doing.

What got me thinking about experimentists was a zippy and insightful article, ``Symptoms of the Dysfunctional Team," in which Ken Cooper gives us plenty of reason to be skeptical about a team's true mission. (You can read the entire piece at his website, ej4.com.) Cooper sums up the stay-the-course inertia that is a natural part of an organization by comparing it with ``the New England farmer who won the lottery and when asked what he would do with the money, responded, `I'm goin' to keep on fahmin' until it's ahl gone.' "

Cooper also points out the fallacy of ``relative success" in this memorable way: ``It's easy for managers to fool themselves by comparing their operations to other, more dysfunctional organizations. (`You think we're bad, you ought to work for --') Teenagers have a wonderful term for this self-deception: `We suck less.' Being less bad is not good."

The best bosses don't care if the glass is half-full or half-empty; they are asking: ``Why are we using a glass -- what other materials could we use? And meanwhile, can we sell ad space on the side? And what can we do with the empty half -- can we lease it out? Who has ideas? How can we try them out?" The experimentist thrives among the question marks.

Dale Dauten is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at dale@dauten.com.