Tackle Wicked Challenges with Human Ingenuity: Ken Tencer

Show Transcript

Make people feel comfortable, bring them together, galvanize the past and push them to just keep thinking about new and different, and that makes sure the complacency doesn't settle in.

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Welcome to the podcast about communication in business, I'm your host. George Torok, did you know that I'm known as the speech coach for executives. That's because I help business leaders deliver the intended message for greater success, and we do that through one on one coaching or group training for the team. When you listen to this podcast, you will hear insights and perspectives from communication experts from around the world. 

My guest today is Ken Tencer. Here's three facts that I think you should know about Ken. One, he is a long time entrepreneur, author and global speaker. Two, he is completing a doctorate in human ingenuity. It's about clever, inventive and fearless thinking in the face of wicked challenges that includes when there's incomplete information, ambiguity and uncertainty. Gee, do we ever run into that? And three. Ken, his values are passion, savage curiosity and the audacity to make a difference. Ken Tencer, welcome to your intended message. 

Thank you, George for having me delighted to be talking with you, and I know we're going to have a fascinating conversation, because I value that savage curiosity as well. So I welcome to see where we're going to go. 

And can we throw the word innovation around as an important concept? Everyone wants to be innovating, and we need to improve innovation. However, some places seem to get stuck, and I don't see they talk about innovation, but I don't really see the innovation. Why do you believe that so many organizations get stuck when it comes to innovating. Well, first with innovation, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't exist on its own.

So I'll say that there's innovation which is a process to market. There's Entrepreneurship which is building the right team to support that innovation. And then there's ingenuity, which is the right thinking and asking the right questions. 

And I think in the past, people focused, and they still focus so much on just the process come up with an idea, what are the three steps to market? But you know, do you have the right people around you? You know, I know, you know, it's been a while since I wrote my first and my first book and then the second, but people are still often doing the same thing. You know, is, hey, is Ken creative? Do we think he's creative? Do we like the shoes he's wearing? Let's throw them on the innovation team, which is really, really just not relevant. So you need the different skill sets, obviously, to be on the team the right people. 

And one of the new skill sets is the ability to manage and accept ambiguity. Obviously, as you know, as you said off the top, we all, we all run into situations where we don't have complete information. We have to rely a bit on our gut these days. But there are ways to measure our openness to ambiguity, and some people are more open or more ready to deal with it. And obviously an innovation with things that are new or different, you need to be so it's the right skill set. It's accepting the fact that ambiguity, and it's accept. Its acceptance is critical to your new team. And then again, human ingenuity, which we'll get into, is a very specialized way of thinking when you don't have complete information. How can do we measure acceptance of ambiguity? God, we've sourced and we use a quantitative assessment that was developed and validated by a university out of Queensland, Australia. So when we approach this with teams, the first things that we do when we talk to the CEO or the team lead is say, we need to measure. 

We need the quant first. We need the numbers that, say, by individual, by team, by department, by organization, who you choose. Or we'll use a combination. We need to understand where your team members lay. Or frankly, if we can help you to select your team members from a greater pool, so that we get yes, we need marketing and HR.

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And ops got that, but we need people with an aptitude or a willingness to open up to it. And it's amazing. I mean, you know, we dealt with an association. It was in healthcare. So, you know, healthcare providers, doctors, nurses, thankfully, you know you have ambiguity, but you don't want to be that innovative. If I'm on an operating table, please cut where you're supposed to cut, you know,

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but when you bring them into an innovation room, we found that out of 100 their openness, or acceptance, ability to manage uncertainty, was was about 43, out of 100 some people were 18 out of 100 so these were not the right people to fully populate the team. You need the subject matter experts, but we ultimately helped them to bring in some entrepreneurial thinkers to the team to create that holistic approach how we think, not just what we know. 

So assessing quantitative really helps a qual, when we get into the workshop, when we when we start, you know, identifying ideas. If the bias in the room is I don't want any risk, I don't want to take on anything, you're not going anywhere. If there's an openness to some type of risk within parameters and to do something different, hey, we can really help you. And so that's, again, that's why quant and the assessment, and it's it's very unique. It's focused, it's focused right on, on ambiguity, which, which is critical. And that's what helps us. Can the team that we put together for innovation? Should they agree all the time?

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Well, they are. We don't need a team.

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So George, it's called your intended message. Here's my intended message, and I know it's a message that isn't, you know as welcome in all places today, but I still think it's the absolute most important We do events say hi to the future events. And the greatest compliment I believe, I ever received was from somebody recognized globally for what he does, who was invited to open one of our events, and he said, Ken, this is the most diverse room I've ever been in in my life. Different ages, different backgrounds, different ethnicities, some from business, some philosophy, some architecture, because they are great at digging and asking questions to start different pronouns, you name it, it was there. So we need diversity. We need different perspectives. So it's not that they have to agree or disagree, it's that they have to come with different points of view. 

And like a Venn diagram, we slowly figure out, you know, where do those circles overlap? Where are the points of agreement? Where are the points of opportunity? Ken for that team, who should lead the team? How do you pick the leader? Or is there a leader? Or is it a rotating Well, I like to think that on an innovation team, it can be a rotating role, and that doesn't mean that every day we change. Usually, that's that's a little haphazard. 

But George, you've got to understand that with innovation, it's a cycle. We're looking for a new idea. We are launching a new idea. So with that new idea, obviously the person has to be more open to the ambiguity, to the uncertainty, and deal with, you know that that queasy feeling of, Oh, my I got to make a decision, you know? So that person has to come to the forefront. From there, you start building and you start putting in your rules. As as that idea becomes a company or division, at that point, you don't need, you know, an entrepreneur like myself, necessarily going left and right and waking up with 100 ideas. You got to get something done. So the leader of the team of the area, or the two i The second in charge, if you will, really needs to be somebody who understands how to manage and systematize what we're doing. But then as things start to, you know, as they start to ebb a little bit, you need new ideas. It flips back to the entrepreneurial or innovative thinking. So you don't necessarily need to change the people on the team. And frankly, you know, if an entrepreneur or an innovator is leading it again, as I said, it can be a two IC that takes over, but the skill set from starting to growing to leveling to regenerating. Or do you need different people at the front of the bus, if you will, that day?

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Right in putting the team together. What's the message? So let's say that that I have an organization of 50 or 100 people, and there's some innovation we want to work on with a new product ideas. What message do we put out to the organization to solicit interest in being part of this team, other than you get to leave early on Friday. So there's a couple of ways to answer that. George for me, you know, we talk about barriers, and a lot of people will say, okay, money time, whatever those are critical barriers. For me, the critical barrier is bias. So it's not just how you put it out, it's who you put it out to

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and how you bring them together. Bias can manifest with a VP and a junior person. You know, the VP raises their eyebrows and everybody is quiet, or they go in a certain direction. So you need a certain type of person that is willing to speak and stand on their own two feet, and you need somebody who leads that, and I always say an external facilitator, because there's a bias from an internal facilitator that leads it. So the message is about the future. The message is about the opportunity. The message is, you know, the next steps for the company, and do you want to be part of it? But again, assessing those people, understanding them, and creating as much as you can an internal bias free process, and that's 10 intended message, well, I guess just on that. But the other thing I'll say is, and I've done quite a bit of this now, is creating, and this isn't, as a researchers, isn't, maybe technically correct, but the

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your control group. We work with university students on behalf of companies now. We create the challenge and the brief, obviously, with with a client organization, because we're helping to resolve their challenge. But we brief the students. We take written questions from the students, because we don't even want like, you know, you and I today, we're looking at each other. If I see you react in a certain way, I go, oh boy. Churches want me going in that direction.

 So I am trying to remove the bias, and I am trying to bring in fresh and divergent thinking from the students and students, it's alumni, it's students, and it can be faculty, it's anyone part of the institution. So there's a message and a way to develop the internal team, but you really today should have that external control group team. Again, I love to use students at different levels and really control for bias. And I got to tell you that it's unbelievable how many times people have said to me, we wouldn't have thought about that internally. That's just not the way we're wired. 

That's not how we think Ken in that situation, the students are they there to question what the internal group is doing, or are they there to offer an entirely different, entirely different set idea internal and external can have the same challenge statement, but there's no overlap or sharing, And I'm still curious about the concept of ambiguity, because typically in an organization, and you pointed out the importance of when you're laying on that operating table, you want the surgeons to cut in the right place. And in the workplace, we want people to be precise. We want the right answer. 

How do you encourage these people that have been hired and rewarded and trained to be precise, to be okay with being well judge. I guess you know some of it again, comes back to developing the right team and making sure you have individuals in the room who are. I think the other reality, though, is most organizations don't understand what a wicked challenge is. And there are three types of challenges. There's simple, there's complex, and there's wicked. Now a simple one, let's just be an HR head for a minute. A simple one is I account receivables. Person quits, you need to hire a new one. Well, you've got a job description, you've done it 100 times. You go out and do it, input, output, simple, complex, one, a lot of different inputs, maybe somebody creates something called the Internet. So all of a sudden, we need a team that knows coding and SEO and SEM and secure.

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30 so at the beginning, you know, it's confusing, it's challenging. You don't have all the answers. It hasn't been done before, but you can find a solution. You can develop those job descriptions, and eventually it becomes again, input, output, not many inputs, you know, and many outputs, just one in, one out. A wicked challenge is different in the sense that there is no one solution. There are resolutions that work in the moment for a period of time. What do I mean by that? Let's stick with you're the head of HR. 

The population is aging. What do we do? How do we solve for that? We also know that, you know, in around 2050, for the first time in history, it's projected that the population of Earth starts to decline, our pool of talent is going to decline or diminish, if you will. We also know that, you know what a lot of people like working from home, maybe not every day, because I understand the benefit of being in the room and developing, you know, talented teams together, but especially in, you know, a city like Toronto, one of the you know, our GTA is pushing to 10 million people. It's an hour, an hour and a half each way. Who needs it every day? So you can only find a resolution. Here's how we're going to deal with our team, where it comes from, how we develop it for the next year or so. And then we have to take a look at those macro trends again and understand how fast they're unfolding, how fast hybrid is unfolding, how fast people are moving away, how fast we've become or been able to engage next generation thinkers to replace the aging one. 

So it's very different. It's not one input, one output, it's a whole bunch of inputs, and they're always changing, and that's why ambiguity and being ambiguous or understanding working with incomplete information about which is changing. It's a completely new skill set that we haven't learned yet. We haven't been taught that in our education system. When we were in school, we we didn't pass the test if we didn't get the right answer, if we were ambiguous. Well, it was George, but, you know, and I've had the opportunity to teach quite a bit grad students and undergrad students and and even in these challenges, I too with with students and alumni, it's unbelievable how many people say to me, we've never been provided no parameters before. 

You know, you give us a challenge, you don't give us the parameters, how much money, how long, the impact of the organization, the macro trends impacting the organization. Instead, we have to help them understand what a macro trend is, and some of the you know, the critical features, but they have to define their own parameters, and then they have to resolve, or come up with a solution in the moment, within those parameters, and state their best case with their best outputs. And I'll say this is super critical for me, because, you know, people always go, the education system is broken. It's broken. We got to fix it. One, it's not broken. 

Two, we don't need to fix it. It's not broken in the sense of it was developed for the industrial resolution. How do we process things faster? It was perfect. Now we're not in the Industrial Revolution anymore. It's not about quicker processing. We're in the knowledge economy. It's about understanding how to see things, to integrate more ideas, you know, to what to our knowledge set, and again, deal with the ambiguity, create parameters. So we just have to set aside most of what it was. We can't really fix it. And again, it didn't need fixing. It had a very specific objective that it met. Now we have to attack and hit the objective of of the knowledge economy, of a parameter free economy. 

And George, I'm guessing, you know, I know you work with so many C suite people that you must see this, that they're also going, boy, I don't know where to start. I don't know how to draw the lines. And you're right. Ken, that's a I hear those words from CEOs and company presidents who say, you know, I don't know for sure if this is the right thing to do, but we're going to go with it. And I'm guessing that the whole concept of ambiguity is a person being able to say, I don't know the answer, and I'm going to make a decision anyways. Well, because we need to do Yes, and that's why I say clever, inventive and fearless thinking.

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So the actual, or the traditional definition of human ingenuity, or our ability to think, is clever, inventive and original thinking, which is good, but original for me, was part of inventive. So when I did my global study, which is part of my doctoral dissertations, I'm this weird duck. I've been an entrepreneur for, I don't know, 35 years, and I decide to go back and do my doctoral thesis now. But I chose it for a reason, because it is the future for all innovators and all entrepreneurs, and that's why I went to clever, inventive and fearless. At some point you need to make a decision. Status quo is a decision. May not be the right one, but it is a decision. 

So you need to have the capacity and the self belief to make a decision about what direction we're going in and a lot of that, you know, there's different levels of how we see and hear and understand things, and the gut level is it's sort of based on what we've learned, what we've taken in over the course of of our careers, of our lives. And that's that, you know, if we hone it right, it's like, okay, I really believe, based on the research today, what my team's put in front of me and my knowledge, this is the best approach we can do. But it's not an absolute approach. But hey, what what really is,

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and that's good guidance there can This is the best on where we're at, what we know, what we can do. This is the best approach. Well, it is. And, you know, could be different next week, people always saying that sort of sarcastically, well, what were they thinking? Well, what I'm doing is to press teams and leaders to know what they were thinking, to state what they're thinking, to be clear about it. It's not always going to be right. I mean, heck, look at how many companies and products fail, not just today or yesterday, for the last 100 years. 

So obviously, there's no precise formula in business, but at least if you can articulate the parameters why you believe it to be true for your organization based on these factors at this point in time. Well, you know what? I think that's about as good as we can, we can all do. And then, yes, as I say, future, you know, attack, or attach it to a macro trend, what we see happening, you know, tomorrow, how the world is evolving. And Ken, I was curious about ambiguity. I believe a lot of people fear it, and I've noticed people when they don't know, they make up their own story and they're more comfortable with that story, because that gives them the assurance that they think they know, but they don't, but feeling that they know, yeah, I'm be comforting to people. Started my

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first company when we were having our first child. My wife was seven months pregnant at the time when I started it and I as Director of Business Development for an international firm, we had a mortgage and two cars, and what a perfect time to, you know, to start your first business. So I'm not a big comfort kind of person. I think if you're comfortable, then, frankly, you're complacent, and your organization is complacent. And if you go back to my first book, was called the 90% rule, and you know, 90%

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for me, it's not a formula or philosophy. It's just saying it, sorry, it's not a formula. It is a philosophy. It says, let's figure out what we're 90 you know, what we're really good or great at? And call that the 90% and then push it aside, and then ask ourselves as individuals or a team, what's the next 10% what can we improve? What can we do differently? You know, what? What should the next step be for our product, service or organization? And I found that one, it respects the past. It respects the people who've worked in the past, rather than, hey, we're here to break everything today. Yeah, maybe you have to, but you still, you know, don't walk and make people feel awful because something got the organization here today to whatever revenue, whatever profitability. Let's respect it. Let's honor it, especially in family business, because that's, that's a critical, that's a critical thing, thing to be doing, but sure, always be pushing yourself for that next 10% and again, it might not be 10% it might end up as you come up with, I don't know the next poster note the next, you know, luggage on wheels, and it becomes 1,000,000% growth. But by saying 10, I'm not trying to overwhelm people. You.

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Don't walk people into a room and say, the past sucks and we got to break everything and boy, this better, you know, be the future of the company, 1,000% growth, or everyone's fired. I mean, first of all, it's nonsense. I mean, most companies don't grow that way, even if you draw a hockey stick on your pitch deck. I've not seen too many actually happen. 

So make people feel comfortable, bring them together, galvanize, galvanize the past and push them to just keep thinking about new and different. And that makes sure the complacency doesn't settle in. Ken your organization is called well high is human ingenuity, sure what? So we are incorporating what we do, helping people, you know, with clever, inventive and fearless thinking right into what we do. And the thing about human ingenuity, it is the future next generation, their openness or understanding the fact that they have, you know, worked with technology and are comfortable with it, that is part of the future, and that's what we do. We walk in with to organizations, to C suite members, and we help them to think about what's next, what's the future of your organization? What's the strategy behind it? You know, what do you have to bring to your team?

 But we do it in very different ways. I mean, we have, again, a very, very unique assessment, validated globally, that we use. We have our own proprietary game called Catalyst, which engages teams for a day or two to help understand and become more familiar with ambiguity. We apply it directly to the organization and help them to learn about macro trends, about empathy, about bias as a barrier, and about wince moments. And wince moments are, you know, everyone, everyone in the past. You know they always come in such a bright question, what keeps you up at night? What indigestion keeps me up at night? So I probably, I probably need a doctor or not you. But a wince moment, I'll end on this, and it's shows the uniqueness of what we do. It's being trained to watch and to read people's reactions. Whether it's a CEO or a team, you will say things, and if you watch the reaction, some of them are just they're just gut level reactions. You can see their body everything tenses up. And I saw that in my research, again, with people from around the world. It was that one like, Oh, I'm uncomfortable. So it helps them truly understand their wince moments. So we're looking to the future with a better understanding, a new skill set, a new approach to resolving these challenges. 

We're looking at different ways to identify these challenges, and we absolutely have a truly unique approach to helping resolve it. And for those who'd like to learn more about Ken and his team and his services, you can find them at the website that say hi to the future.ca You can find that link in the description below Ken. As we prepare to wrap up, imagine that you're sitting down with a team leader that's putting together an innovation team within their company, and they're looking at, where do they go? Where do they go in the next five years? Where do they go? What's happening in the marketplace? How is it changing, whether it's technology, people, sources, where do they go? If you could give that team leader one, two or three pieces of advice, well, sort of a little recap of our talk, George, what might that advice be? So let's say here's my intended message.

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One, choose the right team. There are very specific ways to choose a team today to address wicked challenges. Two, let the team understand the difference between simple, complex and wicked challenges, because too many people get confused, and we use the wrong resources and the wrong approach to resolving a wicked challenge. 

And number three, and this is why, you know, I guess I did my doctorate, is to help develop a very unique, differentiated way to tackle wicked challenges. Follow a forward thinking process. The process of the past were for simple and complex. They weren't for the wicked ones. They didn't look at human ingenuity and the interplay between people and technology, if you will, the way that we do so again, assess, understand and follow a forward-thinking process to resolving and that, that is say I have the future.

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My Guest today is Ken Tencer reminding you to say hi to the future if you like what you heard, tell your friends and post your five-star review on Apple podcasts, because that helps more listeners find us. Come back every week for more practical insights to help you deliver your intended message. I'm your host. George Torok.