Why I prefer to fly under the radar
When it comes to change and innovation, most people argue that engagement is critical. I couldn’t agree more.
The point at which I usually disagree with the majority though, is in the timing.
Should you engage right from the start or actually fly under the radar?
Illustrations by Elina Cecilia Giglio (Link)
Our ‘stories from the field’ this week go back a few years to when I was starting a new job, as Innovation Manager for a large retailer in Australia.
At the time, I was new to the company, and, also new to the country. I was having to learn all the cultural norms and expectations, as well as how things played out in a corporate environment.
After a relatively successful start in the job, assisting in the design and facilitation of a critical workshop, I was finally able to turn to my innovation portfolio, which I had also been focusing on during my first six months. With almost no budget to work with, and no history of formal innovation inside the organisation, it was up to me to uncover the critical opportunities that would yield the most results.
Having graduated in Business and having spent my whole career working inside big companies, either as an employee or a consultant, I had been brainwashed into believing that you need to promote your work (and yourself) if you want to get anything done and, of course, to move up the corporate ladder.
After a few weeks of exploration, visiting a good number of stores, speaking with customers, team members and specialists around the business, I had a good plan of attack. The next step was to convince key stakeholders that I could work in the space I had selected. This was my first mistake.
Innovation, similar to Design, is a discipline that requires a disproportionate amount of action, BEFORE engagement.
Image from Unsplash by @gpthree
The reason for this is that when you have your focus on finding opportunities for innovation, you will very often see things that other people can’t see. It’s not that people won’t see opportunities where you can work, but it’s likely that the opportunities they see won’t always be the best fit for your methods and capabilities.
Although I knew I should be moving to action, and only presenting to stakeholders once I had some initial validation to confirm that my problem space was right, I ignored this. I kept on simply going with the flow, trying to fit into the new workplace culture that I had become a part of.
The next big mistake was trying to cram in all my ideas, incorporating unfamiliar workplace language, into a 10-minute presentation.
My stakeholders were the store leadership team, who would be flying in from across Australia and New Zealand to the company headquarters. Having been scheduled as the last presentation of the entire meeting didn’t help me not to see myself as the star of the show!
A simple update would have been enough.
(The skill of mastering stakeholder engagement only came a few years later, regrettably, once my team and I developed the Jump, Swim and Dive Framework.)
So, disaster was inevitable. And another big mistake lay just around the corner.
When I arrived in the room, I was told that the meeting was running late and that my presentation time was going to be reduced from the original plan of 10 minutes to 5 minutes.
Instead of abandoning my slide pack, and providing a more general update on how I would approach my role, and what I needed from the operation managers or even getting them to talk about their own challenges, I simply decided to run through my slide deck, in half the time!
Yes, I know. It must have been painful to watch — lots of buzz words, new concepts and strategies that didn’t resonate with the room at all. Without the proper time in which to present, I rushed through key foundational concepts and made everything even worse.
Feedback was quick and devastating. But also very honest.
I had delivered bad presentations before, but for some reason, I ignored the learnings until this one exploded in my face.
The most painful part wasn’t reflecting on how poorly I had delivered the presentation, but knowing that I had ignored my intuition to do things differently.
From that moment on, I started flying under the radar and strategically calculating when I needed to engage and when I should put my head down and continue to work.
There are lots of benefits in ‘flying under the radar’.
The first one is, that it gives you more time to do your job, without interference from too many stakeholders. As a designer or innovator, your idea needs time and protection to survive and thrive. Exposing it to criticism too early may make things worse.
The second benefit is to the stakeholders themselves. Exposing people too early to ideas that are still in their formative stage, puts them in a position to make a decision or provide feedback prematurely, when concepts may still be quite intangible and hard to conceive of. Some will ask you to carry on and come back when you have something more developed to show and others may make up scenarios (usually worst-case scenarios) of what this idea could look like in the future and throw up roadblocks to stop you in any way they can.
Flying under the radar doesn’t mean hiding the truth, but choosing wisely who you proactively communicate with and who you don’t. For example, with my bosses, I always over-communicated and made sure that both good and bad news were shared freely and travelled as fast as possible.
I’m a big believer in collaboration and in sharing projects as early as possible, ensuring that you are doing this with the right people (those who can provide you with honest and transparent feedback), and at the right time.
After the disastrous presentation described earlier, I decided to relocate to the backroom of one of the stores owned by the company, on the other side of town. Although my doors were always open, the fact that I was 40 minutes away from the office enabled me to to fly under the radar much more easily.
Fabio Oliveira