What if embracing failure could unlock the secrets to innovation? Join us as we sit down with Darrell Mann, a global consultant and expert in systematic innovation, and unpack the idea of learning from failure to drive success. We also dive into the changing dynamics of knowledge work, as countries like India and China rise in prominence, and discuss how the United States can rekindle its spirit of entrepreneurialism and innovation to remain competitive on the global stage.
This captivating episode also explores Darrell's new book, The Heroes (Startup) Journey, and the integral role of truth in the age of artificial intelligence. Discover Darrell's insights on the importance of leadership and truth, as well as his passion for music, as we learn about his record-breaking number of concerts attended in 2020 and 2021.
We conclude with a powerful song by Otis Redding that serves as a poignant reminder of the value of speaking the truth. Don't miss this engaging conversation filled with thought-provoking insights on innovation, leadership, and the future of global competition.
What if embracing failure could unlock the secrets to innovation? Join us as we sit down with Darrell Mann, a global consultant and expert in systematic innovation, and unpack the idea of learning from failure to drive success. We also dive into the changing dynamics of knowledge work, as countries like India and China rise in prominence, and discuss how the United States can rekindle its spirit of entrepreneurialism and innovation to remain competitive on the global stage.
This captivating episode also explores Darrell's new book, The Heroes (Startup) Journey, and the integral role of truth in the age of artificial intelligence. Discover Darrell's insights on the importance of leadership and truth, as well as his passion for music, as we learn about his record-breaking number of concerts attended in 2020 and 2021.
We conclude with a powerful song by Otis Redding that serves as a poignant reminder of the value of speaking the truth. Don't miss this engaging conversation filled with thought-provoking insights on innovation, leadership, and the future of global competition.
Welcome to Stories in Life. You're on the radio with Mark and Joe. We share stories that affirm your belief in the goodwill, courage, determination, commitment and vision of everyday people.
Mark Wolak:
Our goal is that through another person's story you may find connection. No matter your place in life. The stories we select will be inspiring and maybe help you laugh, cry, think or change your mind about something important in your life.
Joe Boyle:
Join us for this episode of Stories in Life.
Mark Wolak:
Welcome to another episode of Stories in Life. We welcome today Darrell Mann, an expert in systematic innovation and a global consultant in helping organizations find their DNA for success. In the first episode, he introduced us to systematic innovation, the notion of the red world /green world. Red world organizations are very good at operational excellence and the green world are those that are really good at innovation. In the second episode, he identified how to solve the right problem and introduced us to the generational research that's been proven across continents. In this episode, you'll learn how Darrell sees failure as learning. And, where does he see currently the most innovation in the world. He also introduces his new book, Heroes Startup Journey, for those people who are both entrepreneurs and intrepreneurs wanting to learn about leading change. He ends this episode sharing about how truth will be the important skill of the future. Finding truth and solving problems with truth, given our future with artificial intelligence.
Mark Wolak:
Welcome, Darrell Mann. Darrell, we've been visiting about generational research, systematic innovation, not making trade-offs, coming up with new ideas for the country, for the globe. You've got a really special perspective because you're working across continents, helping both business and nonprofit organizations look for innovation, and you said that there were like 2% of entities out there capable of that, so as we look forward.
Mark Wolak:
What are some of the things that you're thinking about in terms of big picture thinking and innovation and knowledge work?
Darrell Mann:
Yeah, I mean, we spend a lot of time care-taking these kind of things. I think it's also fair to say that as a business we've been very reactive. So again, we do not have any salespeople or marketing people. So we write papers, we write books, and articles. The thinking is, if nobody knocks on our door, then they probably weren't very good, and if they do knock on our door then we'll go and talk to people.
Darrell Mann:
So what's come out of that has been a very clear trend towards the amount of work that we're doing in Asia these days, where, especially in India, but not far behind in China the absolute, insatiable thirst for knowledge, I would say, which comes to me as a stark contrast between what I see in the US and in most parts of Western Europe. It's almost a cliche, i would say, that the DNA of the way people think changes when they've been successful, and what I mean by that any big corporation in the US, once they've been successful, that, you can see it with a lot of the Silicon Valley companies right now, a hubris kicks in. But what also kicks in with it is certainly from a leadership perspective. "Don't be the person that messes this up now. So you go from a very dynamic, forward thinking attitude to a very protective one. By doing that, you almost guarantee your failure. It's the organization that I think keep moving forward that would be the ones that are successful. So I think Steve Jobs understood it. I don't think Tim Cook does. I think Elon Musk understands it. I think his flaw is he's not interested in making money. I think he's the holder of the American dream, and it works on the expectation that people are just going to keep throwing money at him so it can keep doing big, exciting things.
Darrell Mann:
We live in a world which is a knowledge-based world. For me, it feels like the inevitable winners are the parts of the world with the most brains in them. And, just from a population perspective, that equals India and it equals China. So I think what we are seeing is a shift towards those parts of the world being the dominant ones, and I think what's made the US so successful in the last 200 years in particular has been its dynamism, its entrepreneurialism, its innovation. But I think that hubris and that defensiveness that's now there now that needs to disappear with a lot more people than it has done right now. I see a lot more green world leadership in Asia and Asian companies than I do in US ones. When I'm working with US clients, it's that red world leader that's trying to protect their reputation and don't want things to get worse. And, of course, innovation in everything means that things will get worse before they get better, and that's a pretty big hurdle. I also noticed with my Asian clients that historically, they've looked to the West to do the innovation, and so I think China in particular has got, I'll say, certainly a reputation for copying solutions from the West and the US in particular.
Darrell Mann:
I think it was really interesting for me cultural differences in that. When we've produced one of our matrix books, we had it translated into Chinese. This was Matrix 2010. I was at a conference in China and somebody came up to me and said I've made Matrix 2011, 2011. He copied everything that I'd done, changed one or two of the numbers. It's like with my Western head. I'm thinking this is horrific. How am I going to sue this person? But in his mind, he was absolutely honoring the work that I'd done, and I think there's that attitude in China. If I copy you, I'm honoring you But, I think what's happened now, and now I mean the last five years in particular, the Chinese government has mandated, for example, that companies will use the TRIZ methodology and use systematic innovation. So I sell a lot more of my books in that part of the world than I do in the West. Those companies and the leaders in them are saying well, we used to look to the West for the innovation. It's not coming as fast as it used to do. So therefore, we'll do it.
Darrell Mann:
I think you just look at some of the giants that are appearing in China: Alibaba, the Tencent, the Baidu, for example.
Darrell Mann:
The reason I think they are becoming so powerful compared to their US equivalent is they live in a world where nobody honours intellectual property at all. So if you're Baidu or Tencent and you've just put something new on your website and you've evolved WeChat, then you just know that somebody else is going to copy you in the next few weeks, and so it's literally like an innovation cauldron over there. The only way to stay ahead is you can't stop those pirates and those copiers, you've just got to keep ahead of them. What you've got in the US is, i think, a very litigious society where the pattern is used as a way of stopping other people, and so you actually end up slowing innovation down. And I think, looking at the world from that innovation perspective, you've got an innovation cauldron in the East versus a patterned trap in the West, and the longer that imbalance continues, i think the faster the East will go ahead, become the dominant part of the planet.
Joe Boyle:
Makes sense. Little scary though.
Darrell Mann:
Yes, it's scary.
Mark Wolak:
Well, I think, you know, because I'm the eternal optimist, One possible avenue of innovation is what some high schools are doing now where, you know, bringing more of a trades orientation into high school graduation, we're bringing some manufacturing back into the United States. That seems like that could be an avenue. But what I also hear is the adverse conditions the leader faces when they try to move a culture away from defensiveness and away from this sense of pride everybody has in being so good. And, we're seeing that right now in Minnesota with 3M.
Joe Boyle:
3M is really struggling as a company across the world.
Mark Wolak:
And I think you're right. I think it was, you know, the success itself that has created some real hardship now for that industry.
Darrell Mann:
I think in the words of the cliche, you know, don't let a good crisis go to waste. And you know these crisis periods in history. You know they are intended to get rid of the deadwood in society, the companies that become lazy, defensive rather than moving forward. I think in the UK, which has had things I would say particularly bad thanks to Brexit and then pandemic, i think within the first three months of the COVID pandemic, it was something like 16% of all the businesses in the country closed. I mean, yeah, permanently shut down. My reaction that is okay. Well, there's the first 16% of the deadwood companies in this country. And, what COVID gave those chief execs and those senior leadership teams was the perfect excuse to close a failing business. And I think, yeah, the phoenix rises from the ashes, i hope. But I think it needs the education sector to create that entrepreneurial spark in kids. But, yeah, again, a good crisis goes to waste. That's what the crisis appears before. I think.
Mark Wolak:
As I'm listening. The knowledge world are people who are attracted to looking deep into data, understanding what information is telling them. Don't get too defensive if you fail. Maybe look at failure a little bit more in terms of learning. And that's a tough thing. In the US culture we see failure as failure.
Darrell Mann:
Yeah, absolutely. Those Red World leaders in the US that (lead for) operational excellence and continuous improvement, and faced with the prospect that things will get worse for the next 12 months, like heaven forbid the next 24 months. They are not used to that world. It's a very different mindset. And, as you were saying, Mark, in green world, this innovation world, you know you're going to get a bunch of stuff wrong. So, even though we've got a systematic process baked in, that is failure. You're going to iterate, you're going to try things out and you are going to fail. But you learn to reframe those failures as learning. Yeah, I didn't fail, I learned, and people like Thomas Edison completely understood that. I think it's getting back to that kind of mindset that says, yeah, i've got nothing to lose as an entrepreneur. I think many entrepreneurs have got nothing to lose. I can try stuff out. If I do it in a systematic fashion, then I've got a much better chance of being successful.
Darrell Mann:
Historically, entrepreneurs it's been a very trial and error existence. Most entrepreneurs attempts end in failure. One of the things that we did at the start of the pandemic was anticipated the fact that a lot of people would lose their jobs in corporate businesses, be forced into the entrepreneurial world. Then we wrote a book for them that says okay, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, then here's the DNA of that person. So the Hero's Startup Journey is the name of the book.
Darrell Mann:
Ironically, it was written for the entrepreneurs. Audience has really picked up on that. It's now our best selling book already, which is really weird because usually our stuff is quite slow burn. But it's not been the entrepreneurs. It's been the intrapreneurs. It's been people inside the big organizations, particularly those that have done well during the pandemic. Yeah, so the communication companies, for example, Zoom, Microsoft, and Cisco have done really well, so they've had a lot of money to invest in let's find better ways of doing things. It's been them and trying to create the intrapreneur inside those organizations that, I think, has perhaps got some of the seeds of where things might head as far as the West and its future success is concerned.
Mark Wolak:
Darrell, this idea that failure is learning, just as a human being, that is such a big obstacle for most people.
Joe Boyle:
It's a cultural thing.
Mark Wolak:
So what are some of the words -- When you bump into one of these people that appears to handle failure as learning and does a really good job of leading through that, what are some of the things that you see them do or say that you think stands out differently from you mentioned the DNA of that leader. Tell me just in a few words. What are you seeing?
Darrell Mann:
I think that's one of the things I'm really intrigued about, and my wife's a teacher, I socialize with a lot of teachers. And, I think what I noticed with a lot of them is that when they see a child going wrong with something, they step in very quickly. They don't want the child to get upset. There's reasons behind that, but I think they step in way too quickly. I think the really skilled leader is the person who can see a team, for example, that's failing, can identify that sweet spot where she has allowed them to fail long enough. They're still going, they're still trying to work their way through the problem, and only steps in at that moment where there's a perception that they're now on the verge of giving up. I think it's almost like pain management, if you like. How much suffering can I allow this team to go through before I step in and help them out?
Darrell Mann:
It's a real skill. I think it's a really difficult one. So far we've found to teach it --- How do you empathize with people enough that you know when is the right moment to step in, when that failure has become too overwhelming to people? But yeah, those are kind of challenges we love in the research team. How do you measure those kind of things. But yeah, I suspect that that's a big aspect to the next generation leaders allowing people to fail, knowing that failure is learning, but I say also knowing when to step in.
Mark Wolak:
That's interesting And the name of that book you mentioned, Yeah, The Hero's Startup Journey is the entrepreneur's book.
Darrell Mann:
Yeah, it's got some of that stuff about. Yeah, failure is part of the process.
Mark Wolak:
Very good. It sounds like something I'd really like to read, since we're you know we're a start-up podcast company.
Mark Wolak:
So, Darrell, anything that you wish we would have asked you today that you think could either be a future conversation or a future program for people. What are some of the things that your anticipatory set is telling you to take a look at?
Darrell Mann:
I've really enjoyed the conversation. It feels like we've covered a lot of territory. I think it'd be really nice. I mean this is very selfish of me, but it'd be really nice. One of the parts of the world that I really missed since the pandemic came along has been coming to Minnesota. So at some point, getting an invite to come back to Minnesota would be fantastic.
Darrell Mann:
But I think, in terms of conversations, the things that are really exciting me at the moment we've just written a paper on truth and AI, just because this whole AI domain is potentially so explosive at the moment. I think we could do a lot more on that, and the thing that goes with it, i think, is truth. So that's, i would say, become the core of our business. If you're in the innovation business, you've got to be in the truth business. I think the big dawning for us in the last couple of years has been that the truth is not just factual truth. It's the metaphorical truth, it's the mythos, the ethos, as well as the logos stuff. Trying to resolve those two things has been, I think, where the deepest think comes. So if there's an interest, it'd be lovely to explore. What does truth mean?
Mark Wolak:
For me, that's one of the things that's been so important. When I look at a leader, and a leader that has integrity, they're the people that want to both search for truth, find truth and then speak it. I don't know that we appreciate that set of skills, those values, today in our culture. I think that that's really a fascinating thing for us to talk about next time we absolutely get together. Absolutely. I know that you love music. I know that you're a left-handed guitarist.
Mark Wolak:
What are you listening to these days. What's the music you're enjoying?
Darrell Mann:
Well, I've really enjoyed going back out to concerts because there was a period in year 2020 when I could not go to anything. So I broke my record last year. I went to 90 concerts last year. I've probably been to 60 already this year, So I still think that a lot of the exciting music is Americana. So you're kind of a folky gentle American music. Yeah, that's what I like.
Mark Wolak:
Yeah Well funny you should mention that, because Joe and I have tickets to see Willie Nelson in June. He just turned 90 years old and he's doing a concert about an hour from where we live. We have row 13 center tickets.
Joe Boyle:
Yeah, Robert Plant and Allison Krause also.
Darrell Mann:
Fantastic. Now I saw Robert Plant and Allison Krause when they toured the first album in the UK and that was an amazing experience. I think the second album is almost as good as the first one. Right, i'm very jealous, yeah.
Mark Wolak:
Well, this has been really a real knowledge ride, let's put it that way for me. I've had to really listen carefully and be attentive to everything you're sharing, because it's so powerful.
Joe Boyle:
Extremely educational and it hits home, yeah, yeah, that you mentioned the truth. You're telling the truth, that's obvious.
Mark Wolak:
Thank you, Darrell, we're going to definitely have you back on. I'd love to. Yeah, we enjoyed it.
Darrell Mann:
I'd love to. Yeah, really enjoyed it. Thanks guys.
Joe Boyle:
And now it's time for Stories in Life. Art from the Heart, Deep Thoughts from the Shallow End. Each episode, we bring you a poem, a song or a reading, just for you.
Joe Boyle:
Well, just like Darrell Mann has been telling us, you got to tell the truth, and that was the late great Otis Redding off the 1965 album, Tell the Truth. So not only is Darrell Mann brilliant, but he saw 90 concerts last year and 60 so far this year.
Mark Wolak:
Yeah, isn't that amazing. You know, i'm completely blown away by this idea of the future innovation being around truth, and truth and artificial intelligence That you know the work of people is going to be to find out the truth by telling the truth.
Joe Boyle:
And rocking to the truth.
Mark Wolak:
Yeah, Darrell absolutely loves coming to Minnesota. We've got to figure out a way to get him here back in the studio.
Joe Boyle:
Yeah, and then maybe line up a concert.
Mark Wolak:
That would be wonderful. I hope our listeners enjoyed this episode of Darrell Mann and Systematic Innovation. We've really learned a lot, i sure did.
Joe Boyle:
We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please join us again next time on Stories in Life. Join us on the radio with Mark and Joe and visit our website at storiesinlife. buzzsprout. com. And don't forget to join us on storiesinlife. buzzsprout. com