Are we ready for a new twist on reality TV? What if we moved benign academic tussles to a new full-contact arena? We could call it the “Ph.D. Cage Match.” Not likely but I have to admit truthfully that it has been a little exciting watching this battle of words brewing between two Harvard academics. Jill Lepore (a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and Harvard Professor of American History) and Clay Christensen (a Harvard Professor of Business Administration and the reigning godfather of the modern innovation movement) have been publicly duking it out over their disagreement on Christensen’s theory of “disruptive innovation.”
[This post was originally published on June 24th in LinkedIn – see Drama in Academia This Week.]
In a recent cover story article (The Disruption Machine) for The New Yorker, Lepore takes aim at Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation as nothing more than a theory of why companies fail and citing that it lacks little predictive value. Christensen retorts with an interview for Bloomberg’s Businessweek where he suggests that Lepore committed a “criminal act of dishonesty” and “at Harvard of all places.” The follow up stories from Slate and others suggests that the whole escapade has regressed to an Ivory League version of calling call for an elementary school fight behind the local gas station. Unfortunately the back and forth name calling doesn’t paint the whole picture.
Innovation is not a cure-all for the ailing organization, like eating a healthy diet it can help the sickly but it is only one piece to a healthy lifestyle. Companies fail for many reasons and a deteriorating ability to drive disruptive innovation is just one possible reason. Pointing out an “innovative” company that has failed does not make disruptive innovation unimportant. The reason for Christensen’s success is that his message has resonated with millions of business practitioners who have observed the truth in his ideas. As startups, companies are quite familiar with risk taking, innovation, and the chances of failure but as the company grows their leaders begin to reward risk management over than risk taking. Eventually many organizations enter a wealth preservation mode where only incremental innovation survives.
Highlights from Lepore’s article in The New Yorker:
“Disruptive innovation is competitive strategy for an age seized by terror.” This is a false conclusion, an overreach, and a bit of academic hyperbole to say the least.
“Most big ideas have loud critics. Not disruption. Disruptive innovation as the explanation for how change happens has been subject to little serious criticism, partly because it’s headlong, while critical inquiry is unhurried; partly because disrupters ridicule doubters by charging them with ‘fogy-ism,’ as if to criticize a theory of change were identical to decrying change; and partly because, in its modern usage, innovation is the idea of progress jammed into a criticism-proof jack-in-the-box.” Here I think that Lepore has a point. Few companies are willing to even acknowledge their disruptive innovation failures let alone admit them in public so there is very little published in this area. I have previously post an article with data scientist Thomas Thurston on his data set of over 1000 corporate ventures from different companies in different industries. His data points to a 78% failure rate among new corporate ventures (see Connecting the Dots on Innovation).
“Disruptive innovation goes further, holding out the hope of salvation against the very damnation it describes: disrupt, and you will be saved.” This is a draw – maybe Christensen and his team are promoting a bit of hyperbole of their own but every movement needs to have a mantra and as such this one seems pretty harmless.
As for Christensen’s rebuttal in Businessweek:
“And then in a stunning reversal, she starts instead to try to discredit Clay Christensen, in a really mean way. And mean is fine, but in order to discredit me, Jill had to break all of the rules of scholarship that she accused me of breaking—in just egregious ways, truly egregious ways. In fact, every one—every one—of those points that she attempted to make [about The Innovator’s Dilemma] has been addressed in a subsequent book or article. Every one! And if she was truly a scholar as she pretends, she would have read [those]. I hope you can understand why I am mad that a woman of her stature could perform such a criminal act of dishonesty—at Harvard, of all places.” This point should go to Christensen. I am not sure it was meant to be as “mean” as he makes it out to be but Lepore did seem equally contrived in her selection of rebuttal cases. In Christensen’s defense, a book can only ever hope to be a theory at a certain snapshot in time. There are going to be positive and negative influences to the theory after publication that it can’t possibly cover. As for other authors, Christensen seems no worse in his predictive accuracy. Just re-read Jim Collins’ Built to Last for a quick confirmation.
“If [Lepore] was actually interested in the theory and cared enough about it to walk 15 minutes to talk and let me know she’s doing this, I could have listed 10 or 15 problems with the theory of disruption that truly need to be addressed and understood. I could list all kinds of problems that we still need to resolve, because a theory is developed in a process, not an event.” Here in my opinion is the root of this entire confrontation. Drama sells and The New Yorker loves to create some occasional drama. If you look at what both parties are saying they are not nearly as far off as the headlines would have you believe (see the drama perpetuate in two Slate stories from June 17 and June 23).
I would have to give the match victory to Christensen but I do agree with Lepore on several of her points. Here is a brief summary of my takeaways from the first Ph.D. Cage Match:
Image Source: wwe.com
I am frequently an advocate for the benefits of children playing video games. I realize that I am somewhat of an outlier but watching my children play I have seen them building real world skills like logical thinking and problem solving. Occasionally I will hear their pangs of frustration but I appreciate watching them strengthen their resolve as they work to overcome a task and complete an adventure. Admittedly there can be many challenges too but for the most part I see the positives outweighing the negatives. Until this weekend, I hadn’t really understood a negative impact of one particular type of game – the Kinect Sports games.
This past weekend was the annual May Day 5K race in my little suburban town. As with most years, my family was participating in the race as a way to get a little exercise and to pay homage to the gods of spring. This year was even more anticipated with the especially long and brutal winter we had in Minnesota. As the date approached, we were watching the favorable weather forecast and looking forward to finding a little sunshine and warmth. This particular “race” attracts runners, joggers, and walkers of every athletic level with the simple goal of getting the heart pumping. Most participants weren’t expecting to win the race – or at least so I thought.
In previous years my family had walked the route and on more than one occasion we were pushing a stroller or carrying one of the kids at least part of the way. This year was going to be different though. For a number of weeks my seven year old son had suggested that he wanted to run the race. On my personal runs, both he and my daughter had tagged along the first mile so I thought 5K might be a little challenging but with a few rest breaks it could be doable. At a minimum I thought it was a good stretch goal for him.
As we made our way to the starting line my son reaffirmed with the family that he is going to run this year and not walk. He started out aggressively by running the first ¼ mile without stopping. As we stopped a couple of times for him to catch his breath you could see he was getting annoyed by the number of people that were passing us. It now became clear that he didn’t want to just run the race; he wanted to win the race.
As we picked up the pace and started to run again I was trying to comprehend how a seven year old could imagine that he could win a 5K (3.1 mi) race? There were plenty of adults, teenagers, and middle school kids in this race – all bigger, stronger and likely faster than he was. How was it that he imagined a 2nd grader, who had never really practiced for a race, would have a chance at winning?
The truth is that these exaggerated expectations were not entirely new. My son has always been pretty competitive – some might say at times a little too competitive. As parents we have tried to help him recognize his competitive behavior and adjust his tone to a healthy level but we were still conscious not to quell it completely. For the remainder of the run (which involved plenty of walking and at least a few threats to “just quit”) I was searching my thoughts for a possible cause to his delusions of grandeur.
For years I have been a proponent of video games as an opportunity for children to build perseverance and learn how to deal with failure and setbacks (see Gaming: A Refuge Where Kids Can Learn How to Fail). After frequent discussions with other parents on the perils of academic grade inflation, 7th place ribbons, and “no score” little league – the binary option of “a win” or “a loss” in video game was a welcome change. For the record, I am still trying to figure out who we are trying to appease with no score little league? From my observations every single kid on the field knew exactly what the score was but we decide not to put it up on the scoreboard?
As I was thinking about the benefits of video games I wondered if there might also be a negative corollary: were some games suggesting that success can come easily? In our house we’ve had the Kinect camera for the Xbox 360 for several years. It really is an amazing piece of technology in that it allows the player to become part of the game by tracking their movements and rendering them as player on the screen. With the handful of games we have purchased our kids are able to “play” almost every sport imaginable, a few titles include baseball, golf, bowling, soccer, volleyball, skiing, and track and field.
During the game the child is able to mimic the motions necessary to “win” but they never fully understand the talent and practice required to really play the sport. They experience the thrill of victory without the required dedication or struggle that comes from working to master a real sport. They never have to log their 10,000 hours of practice as author Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book Outliers. Now there definitely is a positive element to these games in the form of physical exercise. It is great to see them off of the coach and moving, especially during the long indoor months of Minnesota’s winter. The challenge comes in reinforcing the fact that their proficiency in the game doesn’t translate back into the real world.
So back to the 5K race – we did finish with a time of 37 minutes and 30 seconds which he and I both felt was quite respectable. Along the route we worked on focusing on short-term goals like making it to the stoplight instead of “finishing the race” and that seemed to help. We also talked about where he might finish amongst the 2nd grade racers which seemed to take some of the sting out of not winning. We are far from having resolved this challenge of unreasonable expectations entirely but we are definitely on a healthier path.
Just maybe this will be the spark for his resolve to join me on a few more runs this summer?
Image Source: Amazon.com
Last Friday CNET reported that Nike had fired a large part of their Digital Sports division, the team responsible for their FuelBand product. It was estimated that of the 70 person hardware team, 70-80% were let go. Based on the comments of Nike representatives it sounds as though the company isn’t abandoning the technology altogether but just pivoting away from hardware manufacturing. With more phones and wearable devices adding the necessary chips to track motion it looks like Nike will pivot to become more of an integrator into other hardware platforms.
The truth is that these wild swings happen all the time within Innovation / New Business teams. Organizations that are trying to lead the way will frequently find themselves out ahead of the curve and will need to readjust their course. As I have previously posted (see 3 Out of 4 Fail), some researchers have concluded that the “failure rate” of new corporate venture projects comes in at 78%! For those outside of this space it can seem staggering to think that more than 3 out of 4 initiatives fail but from my observations over the years that number sounds about right.
Granted there are definitely things that organizations can do better to manage their innovation Innovation / New Business through the pipeline but the reality remains that there are an incredible number of variables that these teams are trying to manage (see Complexity Theory and New Business Models). They are building a new business, in some cases a new industry, and trying to aim it at a moving target.
The killer is that Nike was one of the first to introduce the “wearable” activity tracker when they launched the Nike+ transmitter that relayed information from your shoe to your iPod while you were on the go. Then they paused. Nike didn’t launch the FuelBand product until February 2012 almost 3 ½ years after Fitbit (the current market leader) introduced their first wearable activity tracker.
Many in the media and CE industry are already diagnosing the “limited” wearable category as dead citing the phone or the multifunction watches as the future of this space. I am not so certain. I continue to use my Fitbit as my activity gauge – telling me when I need to get off the couch and onto the elliptical. When I am home I rarely have my phone on me. I gave up wearing watches a decade ago and don’t intend to look back.
Whether or not this was the right call for Nike won’t be known for some time. More important for the organization is how those employees still remaining with the company will respond. The remaining employees will be watching to see if the company does their best to ensure that those employees who took the risk by join this new initiative are treated fairly. If they are treated poorly, it is likely that the remaining employees will be looking to “de-risk” their initiatives to better ensure their survival.
Every company out there is screaming innovate, innovate, innovate but few are prepared for what happens when these projects “fail” or when they need to make a dramatic pivot. My suggestion is that companies are transparent as possible with these employees early on so that they can plan accordingly – sort of an “innovation prenuptial.” If they wait until the project is in a tailspin it is too late. I wish Nike and the entire wearable category good luck – I really don’t want to have to go back to wearing a watch!
Image Source: Wiki.org
Over the last year I had the opportunity to discover a hidden innovation gem in my own back yard. A group of companies had banded together to help each other build more innovative organizations, or at least organizations that could drive innovation with a higher degree of success. Innovators International was formed in 2007 out of work commissioned by the Mayo Clinic. Today it is a member partnership of 50 of the world’s most innovative companies who are working together to build each member their own structure for driving sustained innovation.
Below is a reprint of my article that was originally published on April 16, 2014 in Innovation Excellence.
When your internal innovation development program isn’t providing the returns that you expected how do you know where to look for the source of the problem? Is it a string of bad luck in the projects that were selected? Is it the leaders that were chosen to run the initiatives? Is it something within the culture of the organization? Or is it a more fundamental issue with the program itself?
Whether you are building an innovation development program from scratch or trying to improve the performance of your current program leaders can quickly feel inundated with mountains of advice. Sifting through that advice for what really “works” or what is right for your company can be a daunting task. With so many other companies on a similar journey, some organizations are trying to improve their chances for finding success by partnering to share their experiences and learn from one another.
Interview with Uri Neren, CEO of Innovators International
Recently I was able to able to meet with one organization that was built on the idea of companies learning from each other in order to successfully develop their own innovation programs. Uri Neren is the CEO of Innovators International which he formed in partnership with 15 companies in 2007. Today, Innovators International is a partnership of 50 global corporations who are working together to build each member their own structure for driving sustained innovation. This is the story of Innovators International.
1. Can you tell me more about how the organization was formed?
In 2007, my team and I were commissioned by the Mayo Clinic to study how the world’s highest growth companies structured innovation. We worked with hundreds of Chief Technology Officers and other innovation leaders to understand their structures for innovation – what was working and not working. As the study was ending, fifteen of these participants (mostly Fortune 500-sized companies) in our hometown of Minneapolis, MN asked us to build them a private group where they could learn from each other. I think some asked us because they wanted our research and we were not a consultancy, but mostly because they had a need that was not being filled. They wanted a private space (no competitors, complete confidentiality, and no vendors), active collaboration, and a forum that was focused on results and implementing solutions. Since forming we have experimented with structures but as we found our groove we decided to expand the group. We now include 50 of the most innovative companies from 15 countries around the world.
2. What expectations do you have for your members?
We are a member-directed organization so the member’s expectations of each other is simple – that everyone comes to the table to: 1) share openly, 2) learn not preach, 3) maintain confidentiality, and 4) prioritize showing up at our gatherings. We manage membership by invite only and we look for companies that are truly invested in building their top-line growth practice, that have a history of changing markets and inventing things that successfully change the world.
3. What have you learned from leading the organization over the last seven years?
Between our research, that looked at the entire market of Innovation Management practices, and our deep work with our member companies we have hit on something that is beginning to look like an Innovation Equation. The highest performing companies have 27 specific things in common – 27 innovation management practices. When combined in the right ways these practices can help top-line growth become more reliable and repeatable. The work has busted myths like “open, sharing, friendly cultures are better for innovation.” We actually found that this premise changes dramatically depending on the company’s other supporting mechanisms for innovation. Our stats show that structures almost always trump culture.
Another interesting data point is that innovation leaders’ number one challenge, by a factor of 15x, is selling new concepts into the organization. As we looked more deeply at this, however, the real problem was always that there was no formal path for innovation, not the innovation leader’s lack of ability to sell. And as such, companies that rely on the ability of their staff to sell new ideas tended to make the worst investment decisions.
My favorite myth though is that innovation is a “risky thing.” The way the majority of companies are currently innovating, it is. But in fact flipping this idea on its head is what has led a majority of high performance companies to success: they are treating innovation as a risk mitigation exercise. Companies that treated their innovation funding like any sane investor – by diversifying and researching what will be ‘popping’ in the future extensively – did the best.
4. What were the expectations of your members in joining Innovators International?
Most of our members joined in the beginning simply to see what others were doing and to commiserate with other big company innovation leaders who are often the outcast in their corporate culture. As we had a couple of years under our belt, some members wanted more, say to solve their specific problem, but their expectations were still modest. We wanted to help every member make measurable progress on their top innovation goal each year and have now set up structures like our Corporate Innovation Assessment which pulls from 30 of the best assessments in the market and which allows us to very smartly connect our members with each other to solve their problems. From the beginning we have been a very results-oriented group – something quite unique in our space.
Bob Wolf of Andersen Windows is an Innovators International founding member. He noted that “We were out to build the most cutting edge structure for our top-line growth team; we wanted to make innovation a disciplined and repeatable thing.”
5. What has been their greatest takeaway from working with these other organizations?
Innovators International has helped the majority of our members find solutions to their top innovation management challenge each year. And more importantly, many of these solutions are now implemented and helping them to create greater market results with more reliability. That is our mission first and foremost.
Some very interesting and unexpected results have been even more impactful for a few members such as gaining new partners in R&D, finding joint venture partners for a new business, and even developing products together. These were great outcomes but we still hold that the most important thing, the reason we all want to drive innovation, is to improve market results.
Ryan Armbruster from UnitedHealth Group noted that “Members helped us find a solution to one of our biggest innovation challenges around staffing. We implemented it within six months and it is up and running. The results orientation and guidance helps us get to answers in the fastest way possible and for a fraction the cost of a consultancy. We also feel that having 100 world thought leaders from a variety of industries helping to solve our problems is one of the most effective ways to get innovation results.”
6. How have you seen your member organizations change since you started Innovators International?
Through our experience we have built an Innovation Maturity Curve that shows the reliability of creating market results for a company. Most of our members have climbed up this curve over the years as they implement new structures and processes for innovation management. We’ve also seen very interesting trends like a shift in ownership of the innovation function: more and more CEOs are taking ownership, more HR leaders, and more marketing leaders. It is clearly, and for good reason, not the job of the R&D leader any longer.
7. How do you see the organization changing over the next seven years?
We have already expanded beyond our “mammoth company” members to bring fantastic mid-cap companies like Patagonia and Quality Bicycle Products. We also opened a couple of new seats for government organizations like NASA and the US Department of Energy last year. Now we’d like to diversify more and include a foundation, and possibly some overseas governments like the European Commission who we invited recently.
We believe that just as a big company needs to structure their growth function to get more reliable results, a society must build in the right structures, funding, processes, and culture to get innovation to flow. I’m excited about the time we spend with the Federal and state governments because I think the US and other developed countries are in grave danger of losing their competitive edge and innovation management can be used to solve this problem.
We have also begun to include some great new resources for our members like venture capital funds and technology sourcing partners who fund and build products and new inventions in partnership with our members. We have become the connector to all the resources an innovation leader needs. Innovation management is quite a puzzle for anyone to solve and is doubly hard inside a large organization that designed to do the opposite.
Author Takeaway
Over my career I have seen too many organizations spend far too much time trying to build out their innovation capability with only internal resources. Some may bring in outside organizations but the external team usually includes too few people with too little knowledge of what the best course of action is. And while your internal team has an intimate knowledge of your organization and the culture they may not have a broad enough view to know “what good looks like” when building out a new innovation practice.
It seems as though Innovators International has found a better way. Based on the feedback from their member partners they are finding success by sharing the collective “innovation intelligence” from the entire group and using that intelligence to drive results.
Together with their members, Innovators International is transforming the way organizations drive innovation.
I have been following the story of Elon Musk for several years now. His attitude toward innovation, risk taking and the possibility of failure is what I consider to be an “example of good.” This attitude has earned him a handsome fortune (worth $12b as of 2014) and a top spot in my “must interview” list for my book. In my previous world of new business development, my team and I had followed Musk’s company Tesla Motors closely as we were working on opportunities in the electric vehicle industry. At the time Musk had just begun general production of the Tesla Roadster and while it had won an award from Time Magazine as one of the best inventions of 2006 it was far from certain that the company could survive.
In December of 2008 both of Musk’s two companies, Telsa and SpaceX, were on the verge of collapse. Tesla was sitting on a pile of defective cars that it couldn’t sell and SpaceX had three failed attempts at launching rockets into orbit. With a fourth rocket attempt, Musk was going to either succeed or fail. Luckily his persistence paid off with a successful launch and with it Musk’s failures were all but forgotten. NASA called soon after the launch with a $1.5b contract for SpaceX (link to 60 Minutes interview).
In 1995, Musk had moved to Palo Alto, California to pursue a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Physics but after his second day on campus he withdrew from the program to strike out on his own (link to Inc. interview). Musk had $2000, a car, a computer, and a penchant for risk taking. He knew that at Stanford his doctoral work may not have made a significant difference in the world and he saw entrepreneurship as a way to “get involved in stuff that really mattered.”
Silicon Valley was founded on the doctrine of trial and error entrepreneurship. The early engineers in the valley knew that discovery only came through the use of the scientific methodology – hypothesis, test, and verify. Most of the time the hypothesis is going to be wrong. But through the discovery process you (and your company) will come out the other end smarter than you went in. Repeat this cycle enough times and you will eventually find success. If instead you short circuit the cycle by 1) only place “sure bets” or 2) covering up your failures you don’t have the chance to learn from them.
Most in Silicon Valley still hold true to this trial and error philosophy. Randy Komisar, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author of Getting to Plan B cites this attitude of accepting failing as the key to the valley’s success. Why do we need to move to “Plan B” anyway? Because “Plan A” wasn’t working! The sooner we move on the next iteration the greater our chances of survival and of finding future success (my previous post on Randy Komisar).
So what is it that causes companies to move from being Risk Takers to Risk Managers?
As organizations grow beyond a startup their founders are frequently replaced by “experienced” executives. In part this happens because the founders are often times not interested or not equipped to run large organizations. Also as the investor base expands the “risk tolerance” of these investors usually decreases – they expect a more consistent return on their investment. With these transitions the engineers and scientists are that were leading the organization are removed or reorganized and replaced with professional managers. These new leaders are trained to minimize risk and are rewarded handsomely for it by their executives, their board of directors, and their investors.
Companies that take too many risks or risks that are “too great” may miss their earnings forecasts for the quarter or maybe the year. In this scenario, the stock price will drop and leaders receive a slap on the wrist from their board. Like Pavlov’s dog we have been conditioned to reward companies that demonstrate a slow and steady march of earnings per share growth.
The problem comes in when that reward system trickles down and permeates
every area within a company. Slow and steady growth becomes the mantra and
the risk taking entrepreneurial ethos eventually turns into the stasis of risk management.
With Musk staying on as CEO of both SpaceX and Telsa it is reasonable to believe that the entrepreneurial ethos will persist. During his 60 Minutes interview he commented that “Well, I didn’t really think Tesla would be successful. I thought we would most likely fail. But I thought that we at least could address the false perception that people have that an electric car had to be ugly and slow and boring like a golf cart.” Musk had a hypothesis that he has tested and now validated – the Tesla Roadster and Model S are both beautiful and fast!
After Musk cashed out of PayPal for roughly $180 million, he was willing to risk it all and bet on Tesla and SpaceX. Many of us are rooting for both companies to succeed but we also can’t wait to see what else might capture his attention next!
“If something’s important enough you should try.
Even if […] the probable outcome is failure.” –Elon Musk
image credit: 60Minutes.com & www.teslamotorsclub.com
The Olympics always bring out the competitive spirit in me. I find my heart racing along with the athletes as they put their lifetime of training to the test for their shot at Olympic glory. For some the difference between a gold medal and despair can be as little as a few hundredths of a second. After this week’s tie for the gold medal in Women’s downhill skiing, a first in Olympic Alpine skiing history, many were suggesting that they needed to start measuring times in the thousandths of a second. Swiss watchmaker Omega has been measuring Olympic time since 1932 and claims that their technology can be accurate to the millionth of a second but the level of accuracy for each sport is determined by the corresponding federation. Whatever the measure of time, success or failure for each of these athletes can come down to the slightest nuance during their final performance.
During the last Summer Olympics I wrote a post about how some athletes have practiced failure as a process in order to become more successful – Practicing Failure: Lessons from Michael Jordan & Olympic Athletes on Failure & Success. With the level of competition so high, winning a gold medal requires a near flawless execution during the final round. With the Winter Olympics, more so than the Summer games, small mistakes can cause extreme injury whether falling out of the air or landing on ice.
Each day brings an injury update and revised tallies of the medal count by country. Do we have more or less than they do? How many gold medals do we have? I will admit that I don’t have a fully thought through example of what the scorecard should be but I know it needs to be one that better captures the essence of the Olympic athlete.
Over the last few days I have glimpsed moments of that essence and was proud of the athletes who willingly shared it with the world. We have seen their surprising victories, their spectacular failures and their shocking withdraws.
American snowboarder Sage Kotsenburg unexpectedly won the first gold medal of the 2014 Sochi Olympics doing a trick he had never done before in the Snowboard Slopestyle competition. In fact, he had never done the “Holy Crail” trick before in his life. When asked about the trick he said “I had no idea I was even going to do a 1620 in my run until three minutes before I dropped. It’s kind of what I’m all about.” An Olympic athlete is confident enough in his skills that he tries a trick that he has never done before – and he wins the gold medal!
On the other side of the coin, Men’s figure skater Jeremy Abbott felt the agony of defeat as he crashed during last night’s short program competition. You could see Jeremy’s nervousness before he took to the ice to begin his routine. After his hard fall the announcers and the crowd were all stunned as he lay for what seemed an eternity. In the post interview Jeremy admitted that he didn’t know what he should do after his fall. As he got to his feet the crowd started cheering and clapping to the beat of the still playing music. With the energy of the crowd Jeremy went on to finish his routine with poise. Everyone in the area and watching on TV was proud of him for having the courage to finish his routine.
Russian four-time Olympic medalist Evgeni Plushenko shocked the hometown crowd when he withdrew from the final men’s skating competition. During the interview Plushenko mentioned that he had hurt his back the previous day while practicing and it was apparent that he was still in pain after an attempted jump in his warm up exercises. The camera captured how he winced from extreme pain. In responding to an interviewer’s question after his withdraw he had to remind everyone that – he is human, just like us, he’s not a robot. Struggling to hold back tears Plushenko admitted that he was about to cry as he left the ice knowing that this would be his final attempt at an Olympic medal.
Two-time gold medal winner Shaun White summed it up perfectly, “it just wasn’t my day.” He went on to say “I don’t think it makes or breaks my career. It’s just one night.” White came up short of a medal in Soshi when he placed fourth place in the halfpipe competition. What makes it more difficult is that White actually had the highest score of the competition but unfortunately it was in the qualifying rounds and not the finals. [See his NBC interview]
After all of the practice and the labyrinth of qualifying events that these athletes have been through to get to the Olympics the language that we (and the media) seem to gravitate toward is success or failure in winning a medal. Is that really what it boils down to – success or failure? The binary option of one or the other seems woefully inadequate to capture the essence of being an Olympic athlete. They may have failed to win a medal but they are still an Olympic athlete, they are still at the pinnacle of their sport.
With a new year brings the annual cycle of personal New Year’s resolutions. Frequently these resolutions include losing weight, reading more, spending less, or getting more involved. Many of us want to change from our current course to something that is more desirable but statistically 88% of the time we will fail at our resolutions. Oftentimes failure comes early in that we say we want to make changes but we never even take the first step.
This article is about two individuals who resolved to get more involved to in their local communities. Knowing that the odds of winning their first campaign for public office were against them they proceeded in taking that first step and registered as candidates for their respective city councils. Chad Bell and Emy Johnson wanted to shared their stories of failure and success in an effort to encourage others to take the first step to get more involved.
This article originally ran on January 15th in my monthly column Facing Failure for the publication Pollen:
Facing Failure: Two Tales of Running For OfficeStories of Two Candidates Who Wanted to Make a Difference
With the New Year upon us, many will be formulating their personal resolutions. As the years have passed, I hear more friends and colleagues committing to get involved in order to make a difference in their community. I am continually amazed by those who take their desire to create change or serve their communities and run for public office. Having worked on campaigns in the past, I have seen firsthand the effort and the toll that running for office takes on the candidate and his/her family. Knowing that the odds of winning an election can be low, these candidates proceed in putting themselves out there because they believe that they have something to offer and that they can make a difference.
This is the story of two candidates, who in 2012 both ran for their respective city councils. One ended in success and their other ended in failure. The goal of this article is not simply to compare and contrast but to provide those who might consider running for elected office transparency into their journeys. While both candidates were interviewed separately, it was remarkable how similar some of their responses were.
Both candidates have been active volunteers in their community and both had participated in the Policy Fellows program at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School. Emy Johnson won her race for Shoreview City Council against five other challengers for only two open seats. Chad Bell lost his race for Edina City Council against three other challengers for two seats that were held by incumbents. Knowing that it wouldn’t be easy, they both were willing to throw their hats into the ring because they wanted to make a difference. These are their stories.
Q: What motivated you to run for office?
Emy: There were many things that led me to pursue a run for office. I’d been actively involved in my local community already and had served on committees and boards, but I wanted to be in a position of making a greater impact. I felt that if I were to be elected to serve on the city council, I would get a chance to serve more broadly and use what I had learned from my professional life in service for the greater good. Several members of my family spent their lives making a difference in their community and public service wasn’t necessarily an elective or an option—it was just what you did, what you should do.
Chad: I always had an interest in politics and got exposed to it in college when I was on the all college council. But for me it came down to the fact that I wanted to serve the city. I have lived in Edina for over eight years and I thought I could bring a perspective and skill set that would be helpful. Also, I thought it would be an enjoyable experience.
Q: Some people might say they are interested in running for office but they never do. What was it that motivated you to follow through and register as a candidate?
Emy: Moving from the idea of public service to running for the position came about as a result of the effect numerous mentors had on my life. I was encouraged to have compassion for people and their issues and challenges. If you care about people, you want to help them, but you have to be in a position of leadership to do something; you can’t just sit back.
Chad: I told myself that if I was really serious than it was time to stop talking and start doing. I also got motivation from the time I spent in the Humphrey School Policy Fellows program. It had awakened the interest I had around public service and getting more involved.
Q: Did you think about your chances of success as you stepped forward? Did you know how many other candidates were running at the time?
Emy: Since this was a new arena I was stepping into, there was certainly a fear of the unknown, but I was excited too! I found out quickly that I was one of six attempting to fill two seats on the council, and I knew that it would require hard work and dedication to separate myself from all the other candidates. Although I was already actively serving in the community, I realized I needed to grow my relationships with residents and business owners, to embrace the history of the city and grow that legacy. If I could do this, I could succeed.
Chad: There were two seats up for election and two incumbents were running. Both were formidable candidates with longstanding community ties. Honestly, I knew my chances were long but I did not want to use that as an excuse. Waiting for the “right time” seemed like a cop out to me. If I was serious I should get involved and do it now.
Q: What was the most enjoyable piece of running for office?
Emy: My favorite part of running for office was meeting and interacting with such a diverse audience—from children who attend our schools to parents who are raising families. One woman I met at Johanna Shores Assisted Living had been born and raised in Shoreview and had raised her own children there. The stories and life histories I encountered were inspiring.
Chad: Meeting people and listening to what they had to say. It was interesting and enlightening. I never got tired of that.
Q: What was the most difficult piece of running for office?
Emy: I was really challenged by trying to be in two places at once, maximizing the time I had, and negotiating social media with my marketing director (in this case, my sister-in-law who was pregnant at the time with her fourth child). This is the reality of running a campaign—pulling together a staff consisting of a retired neighbor, a father-in-law, a pregnant sister-in-law, and two teenaged children along with countless other volunteers and supporters.
Chad: Having people tell me they really liked me as a candidate but were not going to support me due to their relationship with the incumbent candidates. I tried to remain upbeat during the campaign but have to admit that was disheartening.
Q: What did you find most unexpected about running?
Emy: The amount of people—even perfect strangers—who rallied behind me and showed support early on, trusting my abilities and my vision to lead them. I found myself in awe of the trust they placed in me.
Chad: How much fun it was and how little connection to the town I had. During my eight years in Edina I thought I knew a lot people and had a wide network. I had to admit that I was naive to think that was enough.
Q: Was there ever a time during the campaign when you felt as though you knew how your race would turn out?
Emy: No. I truly had no idea if I would be the winner. Even though I started the campaign on the premise I would win, there is a big gap between the idea and the reality. Were people getting to know me? Did the community understand the dedication and hard work I would bring to the position? Did they realize that my heart truly was in serving my neighbors, my city of Shoreview? I had been coached by many and understood that most candidates lost their first elections. The first time you run for office is more about the experience of getting out there and growing your confidence in public service than winning the position.
Chad: After my first community debate when I got feedback from so many folks about how much they liked my candidacy but that were not going to vote for me. It was tough. It felt like I was not going to get into the club no matter what. Personally I wanted to see it through and give my best effort. I didn’t want to have regrets and I didn’t want to stop fighting.
Q: Emy, how surprised were you when you won?
Emy: The evening of the election, I had invited all of my supporters, friends, family, and even fellow candidates to an election reception at a local business as a way to express my gratitude. I think the moment when a supporter, and now friend, came running in with the results from just one precinct, stopped me dead in my tracks. His excitement as he ran over to me with the news, announcing me as the winner of that precinct, affirmed that my hard work and commitment had actually paid off. I was simply stunned.
Q: Chad, how has losing your election changed your goals?
Chad: It has not changed my goals, but it has solidified what I need to do next time to have a better chance to win. I need better organization and to be stronger with my clarity of vision when explaining why I was seeking the position. I had chosen to run my campaign by myself and it was a significant amount of effort.
Q: What advice would you give to others who are thinking about running for office?
Emy: Do it. The experience is incredibly rewarding and our society needs people who believe in the common good.
Chad: Do it and don’t wait for the “right time.” It takes a lot more courage than I thought it did. It’s humbling but also rewarding…even in defeat.
Q: Were there any people or resources that helped you along the way?
Emy: I was certain that running for public office would require backing in every corner. I was incredibly blessed to have support from individuals who helped with marketing, social media, door knocking, donations—essentially an army of supporters, willing to contribute in different ways and who believed in me.
Chad: I had made a few strong connections with voters who after hearing what I had to say went out of their way to help my campaign. Looking back, though, I realize that I would need more support if I was going to be able to win.
Will this be the year that you make your resolution to run for public office? Building a strong civic-minded community takes candidates who want to make a difference and who are willing to throw their hats into the ring. It does take time and effort, but whether you win or lose, you will survive. I want to thank both Emy and Chad for sharing their candor and insight. We are lucky to have such qualified candidates!
Connect with Emy Johnson on LinkedIn, Twitter, or her blog www.emyjohnson.com.
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