I can tell you that being playful and being curious are the root of innovation
there appears to be a part of our brain called the ventral striatum that's the
technical term or you also could call it the seeking system and that this system
is urging us to explore the boundaries of what we know it's the new and it's
the desire to learn this on board in a part of our brain and we can think about
stimulating it we can think about activating it for example when the
seeking system is activated it releases dopamine into our body dopamine is a
neurotransmitter that makes us feel more alive literally the feeling of zest or
enthusiasm or curiosity Wells up with that within us and it's an innate
feeling its intrinsic what might be interesting is to think about what are
some ways that leaders can stimulate that part of the brain and I think that
there are three different approaches that they can use one of the ones that
is probably the easiest is experimentation and by experimentation
what I mean is playing with the boundaries of how we usually do things
to try to understand if we can create a better effect now Google has moved away
from this in recent years but this early movement of giving people 20% of their
time just to play around this is something that 3m is still doing 15% of
Engineers time is bootleg time where they're not supposed to work on their
regular job they're supposed to experiment and play around with the
edges and we know that this is where a lot of these innovations come out you
know that Google Maps or sticky notes a lot of these come out of not a senior
leader saying do it this way but a senior leader saying play around see
what your interests are and where they take you so I would call that a
leadership practice or a leadership mindset that allows for the space to
develop to play to invent to create in addition to experimentation this idea
about understanding our strengths playing to our strengths for humans this
idea about identity and what is my potential and what am i capable I'm on
the planet that seems to be something that is an ignition switch
it makes us enthusiastic to try it makes us want to pursue the potential that we
have within us and then the third activator of the seeking system is this
concept of the why of the work again this urge within us is to understand the
cause and effect of our actions but so many of us at work don't really ever get
to see or feel that final effect and so ways that leaders can help personalize
the purpose is this third activator and I'll give you one story about that I can
steal this story from Adam grant he looked at call center operators but in
this one they were not trying to solve problems they were asking for money
they were fund raisers and what he did is he randomly assigned half of the fund
raisers to a condition or they just got to meet a student and it was a recipient
of the scholarship money and this student sat with him and said thank you
ten minutes he said thank you I just want to you know appreciate what you do
because I couldn't afford school without you I'm basically here because of you
and then they just had a chance ten minutes to chat with that person about
what classes he or she was taking or trips that he or she may have taken and
then they went away and there were no group hugs it wasn't a tearful exchange
but what's interesting is after those people went back to work they were
making on average three times more calls each of those calls was on average
making about twice as much likelihood of getting money so what they found is by
increasing the personal connection with the recipient of the work they were able
to highlight the purpose and they were able to energize these people they were
to activate these people to not only make more calls and have more stamina at
the rejection but also be more effective with each call most of us on board in
the way the Henry Ford would have we get them right into the job right away
because we want efficiency we want to get people
up to speed quickly and there's not a wasted minute
so it's job job job and what's interesting is if you start with
humanity and you start with you're a person there are probably things about
you that are unique that we should know about why don't we start by socializing
some of the ways that were unique and that we add value to the team and I
think by humanizing that relationship it's so simple but it actually stands
out as being rare