Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And Greg Galle is on the other end of the line, I would call him really a very good friend. He owns a company called Solv. Next in Half Moon Bay, California. And he also has a book called Think Wrong that everybody who's listening to this podcast should get we're going to be talking about a few things out of this book, Greg, Good day to you. How are you doing?

Greg Galle
Oh, great to see you, Greg. I'm doing very well. Thanks.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's a pleasure having you on the show. And when I did the training with you and Mike up in Half Moon Bay, I was so impressed. And we've continued our friendship and just kind of discussed this in for my listeners, anybody who's in leadership or is in doing what I call business development, decision making, in making and or involved in innovating a company you really need to listen closely to this podcast, okay, because Greg galley and solve next. It's Sol vxd.com. Would be the default from you. Actually, this all started with John V. Lindbergh. John Bielenberg. Berg used to be Greg's, I guess partner, along with Mike burns. And Bill and Berg and I met at a conference in Claremont Colleges at the Claremont Colleges. And that goes back like many, many moons ago. And I always respected him and still follow him on the internet. So there's three people. There's Mike burns, Greg galley, and John Muhlenberg, and not that Greg isn't a fascinating guy. But John Bielenberg, is a pretty fascinating, smart, dude, let me tell you, Okay,

Greg Galle
I've had the good fortune of knowing John for quite some time since we met in the early 90s, when I was at an organization called Wells Fargo, Nikko investment advisors. And we were doing some branding and positioning work there. And I had the good fortune of meeting John through that. And we've, we've maintained our collaborations and friendship ever since. And, like you said, he's always somebody who's off on some kind of interesting adventure. And there's always something to learn from those adventures with him. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I

Greg Voisen
think he's semi-retired at this point. But the reality is, he's, he's, he is a continual learner, and just a really good guy. But I'm going to let everybody know about you, Greg. 30-year experience, thinking wrong about leadership, innovation, coaching, planning, and decision making, as well as a broad array of private public and civil sector innovation, challenges, including product service, process systems, policy experience, engagement, talent, professional development, and cultural innovation. Yes, that's a lot. But if you read through that, I think most importantly, I don't want to call this a think tank, because he would probably slap me on the hand. But I think what you should look at solve next was started in 2012. And it reaches 1000s of people per year through client work and innovations, invitations to participate in top conferences and events around the world. He's recognized, by the way, as a problem with that problem solving is broken. And he built a first of a kind, cloud based problem solving system with his ex-copartner, Mike burns, that enables individuals and organizations to transform what is and innovate what's next for themselves, their organizations, their communities, and their countries, I think wrong is used around the world across all sectors of society, from global corporations to individuals running nonprofits. He also serves on the board of not for sale, and advisor to fuse Corp and a board member emeritus of the Hope Street group. Well, that's a little bit about him, you can look him up on LinkedIn. That's where that bio was, you can go to solve next. Again, I would highly encourage you to do that. Greg, why don't we kick this off. And really love I told a little bit about your story before the story, but it sets a context for a podcast. Why you and your partners decided to turn your passions for innovation into an organization that helps companies develop the rigor and discipline to successfully innovate because, look, you talk about the contrast between performance systems and innovation systems. And I think there's really something very significant about this that people need to hear. Right. So speak with us if you are worried about this discipline to successfully innovating?

Greg Galle
Yeah, well, it certainly wasn't where we started, right where we started was, you know, John is a designer by training. I'm a designer by training. Mike is a geologist by training. So he ended up there. But, you know, we've always all three of us were very interested in how we use human ingenuity to unlock new possibilities and create solutions that didn't exist before. And I think the emphasis of our organization, the very beginning was really around idea generation and how we come up with disruptive ideas that are going to lead to something, something better, you know, however you define better, it's going to drive positive impact in the world. So that was our that was our motivation, and kind of where we focused. Initially, we had a client, a guy named Brian future, who was the CEO or the CMO, I'm sorry, the CMO Chief Marketing Officer at Deloitte Consulting. And Brian was, you know, a great friend, a great client, we did a lot of fantastic work with him. And he sat me down at one point and said, you know, Greg, I think this is great, what you're doing, I really like to think wrong methodology. I love how disruptive it is. But I don't think ideas are the problem. I don't think that that people have a shortage of ideas. But that God has a shortage of understanding of how to take those ideas and turn them into something real in the world. And I sort of conveniently ignored Brian for about five years. So, you know, he told us that but this was when we were super excited about launching fake wrong and really getting idea generation out there. And it was only with time, and having encountered what Brian was trying to describe to me and be helpful about early on that, that we started to look at and say, Oh, it's not just idea generation. It's not just how do we come up with something new and creative? And how do we use our ingenuity to do that? But how do we use our ingenuity to actually deliver those solutions and make them real in the world to make sure that they can operate. And we finally, I had another client out of South Africa, Johannesburg, who was the CFO for Standard Bank there, a guy named Sean Doherty. And Shawn and iOS are in a classroom in. In New York, we were presenting to a group of leaders from around the world, in a program called meeting strategic changing growth. And Sean said, what we really need in the innovation space, is to apply the same rigor and discipline that we do in the day to day operation of our business, we need to do that innovation. And I found that really compelling. It's something that you don't hear about, often, that

Greg Voisen
We tend to think seems it seems contrary to what people would assume you're going to do. And pardon me, I'm going to use this in a think tank, where you're trying to explore your intuition more versus rigor. Right? When you think of the word rigor, you're like, holy crap, and being innovative isn't supposed to be involved with any kind of rigor.

Greg Galle
Well, and there's, you're absolutely right. And it's, it's not consistent with the mythology that's been built up around the creative people, the creative class, right, right. People like Steve Jobs, and people like Elon Musk, people like Richard Branson, you know, these are sort of people that we've seen that have been disruptive and sort of moved things forward in their industries, and in areas that fascinated them, and that they wanted to be involved in. But they kind of cultivate this mythology of the creative genius, and that somehow they've got something that others don't have that makes it possible for them to conceive of the world in ways that others can't. And I do think that they do have genius. I think all those three individuals have genius, for good and bad, right? And, and but I but what if, for the rest of us mere mortals to do this work, we need to have systems for one coming up with new ideas, and then to progressing them and making them real. And so the other thing is that if you look around the landscape, you can see lots of people who've been creative once they had a genius moments, but they haven't been able to repeat that moment. And that's where this idea of a system of innovation comes in, which is how can you create a structure in which the constraints and the prospects actually help you do it again and again? And again?

Greg Voisen
What do you would you say about you know, I've had Steven Kotler on here before and of all people check in flow, right flow genome. He's every book he's ever written. He's been on the show, but there's something interesting around purpose. Curiosity, passion, right? And when you look inside people who've broken the mold, yeah, okay. I would say there is this inherent. I'm just speaking from what I've heard from much of the research Yeah, Um, that they're extremely curious. They have a very intense drive toward purpose. And if you looked at the people, you just profiled Branson and all the rest that's there. But when people get stuck, okay, as 1000s of listeners out there right now are going like, great. You know, I got I got a purpose, but I'm still stuck. Right? And so my question is, how did you break away from traditional problem solving, because it's not always just a problem. It's like, I have identified something, but I'm inventing something new, to make it better, so that they can really do something, what did I solve next? And you and B, Lindbergh and Mike come up with something that would help the average dude. Right. And I don't consider myself average. But when I went through your system, I like it was like a light bulb went off on systems. Right? And I was like, how did you guys really come up with these systems that helped me become more innovative?

Greg Galle
Well, I think that we were looking at what's standing in our way, and the two big things that stand in our way that really keep us from imagining new things. And from pursuing those and making them real. Our biology, sort of the way that our brain works. culture and how culture resists change as a way of self-preservation is way of protecting itself from outside threats. So you know, so think wrong as a problem solving methodology really, is about tricking our brain and tricking our culture into entertaining new possibilities and exploring things that maybe feel weird or strange or, or threatening, and giving ourselves enough space to do that. And then this is where the system of innovation comes in think wrong is just a toolkit. It's a process and it's a skill set that exists in a larger system.

Greg Voisen
And you have five kinds of principles around it. One of them was be bold, I remember that.

Greg Galle
Yeah, so we have the six thing frog practices so thick, it's like it's like dwarves they're hard to keep track seven Snow White, right? There was no there was sleepy, there was no pee there was okay. Well, we have the bold, we have get out. So see, be bold about why we are doing this? Are we being bold enough? What's what our aspirations get out, which is seeking fresh inspiration and being attentive to new inputs? Let go letting go the orthodoxies and biases and assumptions that keep us from generating new possibilities and exploring new possibilities. That small, which is about how do we take an assumption that we're making a test and learning so that we're progressing on new knowledge and do that very rapidly. And then there was move fast, that's about taking what we're learning and actually using that to accelerate progress, but also leaning into the collaborators that we've assembled around the product of the project, or the opportunity, and really trusting their knowledge and trusting their skills, so that we're working at a pace that we can't do individually. And so Oh, and I left out make stuff. See I only gave you five as well make stuff is one of the other practices, which is really comes out of design thinking that idea of rapid, rapidly visualizing and prototyping and building as a way of not only understanding what the solution might be, like getting a deeper understanding as to the problem. So yeah, those, those six, those six, think wrong practices are each very useful at different moments in a problem solving process. So

Greg Voisen
Well, what I found, I found this 30 interrupt, but I found this in your course. And I think this is important. Or in the sessions, it was three days you were able to take. And this is really when people out there listening, think about this. People from diverse walks of life, he had people from the military people from Google, you had people like me, you put them all in a room. And you had them work on not imaginary issues, issues, which we could literally do something with. I remember walking out into the community and asking questions and people in restaurants and doing just some really fun stuff, right. And the point was, when you walked away, you could see how you could do that. And I always thought, wow, you didn't have people in an innovation team that worked for Google, all of them just sitting in quadrant going now we're working on this problem we're trying to solve. We had all kinds of people from all over everywhere. Yeah, right. I think there's

Greg Galle
A couple of things in that that one is diversity in problem solving is really powerful. So if you have people who have different lived experiences, different points of view, different knowledge, different skills. You know, they might have different belief systems, coming from different generations or different geographies. The more diverse the team, the more able it is to actually conceive of things together that no one person could conceive of on their own, because we're blending all of these different strengths to Gather and we're starting, we're starting to look at challenges more holistically. So it sounds like, you know, you experienced that firsthand in that intensive session that you went through. The other thing is we do have a bias towards action. So everything that we do is actually built in such a way to give you the practical tools that you need to do this work not just to deliver theory, but to say, what's the what's a common language that we can use to that that's accessible that we can use to describe what we're doing? What are frameworks that we have that help organize our thinking and our action? So like in the think wrong intensive, you learned about the deflection point, you know, moving from the status quo up to the future state, you learned about the certainty map? What are thinking about how certain we are about the problem? And how certain knew about the solution? And what does that tell us about which of these practices we should use? So you start to start to have these tools that you can use to start to organize the way that you're going to approach the problem. And then

Greg Voisen
drills skills drills. That's hard to hear. That's part of your software. Absolute, you know, you know, Greg, what, I think, is it the crux of this, like the what you originally said, the guy from South Africa told you, hey, we got a device on I think that was genius. Did he not write a book to know? I thought he did. So I was thinking that he was in the banking industry. But then that sparked you? Yeah, many organizations struggle to balance the need for efficiency and productivity, and the desire to innovate and create out of the frameworks, tools, skills, that you teach in your book and think wrong, conquer that status quo, and drive what you referred to at your website. rapid change. Now, I'm not certain if that isn't a conundrum, because I've never seen really super rapid change. You know, I'm watching what's going on in our world today with the fires and the floods. Yeah, whatever. And I look at the social biologists that I interviewed, that did the watchman's rattle. And she said, it's almost like, we wait until it's right in front of our frickin’ faces. We're going to get hit by a Mack truck, because our species just doesn't know. Pardon me. How the fuck to do it any differently.

Greg Galle
Yeah, no, I think that I know. The word rapid is relative, right? Yeah. Yeah. Rapid about doing it faster than we are than we than we currently are. Yeah, exactly. I agree. So there's two things that there's there is a there is a new book underway right now, which is going to be called the next book. And it's all about the next systems and how and how to build a next system versus the now system. So the innovation system versus the performance system, that is all been informed by the think wrong work by the work that we didn't think wrong, the book that we wrote and how we've been deploying that and using it in conjunction with clients around the world. And it really is a response to this to this request from Shaun Dougherty, which was, you know, I need to manage discipline to rigorous way to manage to handle the innovation work that's being done here. And so a system of innovation actually looks at the people layer, it looks at the process layer, and it looks at the platform layer of your innovation system. So it looks at what are the roles or responsibilities and skills and knowledge and expertise that's required? What is the process by which this work gets done? How do we manage portfolios of innovation opportunities? How do we make decisions? How do we do funding? All of that? What does governance look like in an innovation system? And then it sits on top of this, on top of a platform, which has some sort of some hard assets in it like software and tools, knowledge, data, those sorts of things. But it also has, it should contain your organization's expression of what is our purpose? So back to your conversation around purpose and curiosity and passion? What is our vision? What impact do we want to make what difference we want to do we have values and purpose statement that actually celebrate and honor the importance of innovation to our future and the contribution that we're going to make to our markets to society, whatever you’re the level of ambition of the organization is. So a system of innovation starts to look at this, this stack. And really, it's about working with organizations to get very clear and concrete about what is it that we're putting in place to make sure that innovation can succeed in our organization, they've done that work for the performance system side, they've done that work for the for the for the part that is running procedures and producing the known solutions, not

Greg Voisen
the innovation side, not the innovation side. So in your video, you've got a really great video by the way, and I'll tell my listeners, it's, it's called the difference it well, it's not I call this performance systems versus innovation systems. That video, there's some key differences, right? And if you would tell the listeners what those differences are, and why a company of almost any size would really want to understand this. Yeah, this isn't just for Google this just this isn't it's, it's for everybody.

Greg Galle
Yeah, I was having a conversation with somebody recently said, well, if you're a startup, do you need to have a performance systems like, oh, absolutely, what startups do is they basically usually will rent a performance system because they can't afford to build on their own. So they outsource a whole bunch of those things. But you want to have both the performance system and the innovation system in place. And those two things need to work in concert. But the difference is, when we know what the problem is, and we know what the solution is, then our focus ought to be on operational excellence, it ought to be on how can we deliver that those known solutions to those that known set of problems as efficiently and effectively as possible? And, and in that situation, disruption and uncertainty are really the enemy, right, because they brag they create friction, they create disruption. And so an example would be in that people layer, you want to have, you want to have experienced operators who know how to mitigate risk or minimize risk. And there's a mindset of risk avoidance in a next, sorry, an analysis them in the in the performance system. On the other side, where you have an innovation system, you want leaders who understand exploration and experimentation and discovery and who embrace uncertainty, and who know how to take on risk in a way that doesn't put the whole organization in jeopardy, but actually is smart about deploying capital against opportunities in order to generate learning. And so it's really different mindsets, but both organizations need leaders, right, the performance system and the end the innovation system, both need leaders who have a mindset and an attitude about risk. They're just in opposition to each other. Because let's just use our client who designs aircraft and builds aircraft, commercial aircraft, aircraft for the defense space. You don't want on the performance side, you don't want somebody to say, hey, I've got an idea. We're going to try something we never did today on this airplane that you're flying on. Right. But you do know that somebody has to be looking at experimental design in terms of wing configurations in terms of different alternative fuels. And there's a whole way of beginning to explore and discover what might create a faster plane or a more fuel efficient plane, or

Greg Voisen
we're not that we're not that far off from an electric plane, they say even with solar power. Absolutely. I mean, I don't think it's that far away.

Greg Galle
Is it? Greg, are there solar planes flying today? Yeah, no, planes are flying today. And electric helicopters are flying today.

Greg Voisen
And imagine what that's going to do to the co2 emissions. Yeah. And I mean, just, if you really think about it, it's, it's intense.

Greg Galle
But again, you don't want to be flying from, you know, from San Diego to New York and had the pilot come on and say, hey, today, we loaded the plane up with a fuel you've never tried before, right? I could get off that plane. So

Greg Voisen
We have plenty of sunshine, we'll make it to New York, because our solar banners.

Greg Galle
The performance system, you know, has a certain set of requirements in terms of what you're going to do. And in the innovation system, a different set of requirements. So it doesn't mean that there's different, there are different categories and components. There's different flavors of component, right? So leadership, leadership, mindset, just different, right? The process, that is the process that you use to operate your existing organization is not the same process of discovery and experimentation and validation that you use to run your innovation system. They both need to have defined processes that are run effectively, that are governed by a set of rules, the rules that govern your now system will not work for your next system, because there are those that rule set is there to minimize risk not to do not to take risk on in an intelligent smart way. So that you can discover new things. So well, I always

Greg Voisen
find it fascinating. You know, I can take them distill this down and do some just reality TV show. Right? And I and I happen to be a fan of restaurant and possible and I'm sure a lot of my listeners have seen it. And they see Robert Irvine, and he always comes in and says “Do you know your systems?” And they will all say no. What do you have a p&l. Now? Do you know how much money you're making off your food now? And then he'll draw the circle with the process with 1/3 1/3 1/3. Right? He gets that, now they have to innovate them with their way out of where they are, with new systems, procedures and innovation to actually make this place more profitable, more whatever. But if you take it at its basic level, right and go, okay, hey, is this he goes in and he disrupts, he shakes the shit out of people, he changes the inside of the business. And then he says, hey, we're going to make money, and most of them do. But you gave an example of Airbus, which I know that's one of your customers, real world examples that have successfully integrated both performance and innovation systems? How has this integration benefited the growth and sustainability as far as you're concerned? Because every business from the one I just said, a little mom and pop restaurant all the way up to Airbus and Google, and you're looking at some of the stuff that's going on? personalities, people, innovation, design, all this stuff. It all plays in there. Can you give us a few other examples of places where people have worked with you, and they've had huge successes?

Greg Galle
Yeah, so you know, I think it's interesting, we do some work with the with an organization called the Council of insurance agents and brokers. So it's a, it's a funny space. But I find industry associations really interesting. They aggregate the buying power and the brain power of an entire industry. And the council has been really forward looking in terms of both innovating for the industry association itself, and then pushing skills and capabilities out to its members. And what, what we see there is a shift towards running a portfolio of innovation projects, and actually setting clear innovation goals that are different than their operational goals and making fantastic progress on that. And that's a big shift. The other thing is they're doing all of this knowledge transfer out to their member organizations. So they're benefiting from sort of pooling their investment in innovation, and then distributing the skills and tools back out. So I think that's one that's an interesting model

Greg Voisen
that does that organizations see automation, and software and AI actually playing a big role in the future toward the replacement of their brokers and agents. I mean, because if you look at evolution, I have a big history in that industry, and they're slow to change. Yeah. So my question is, do you are they concerned? Are they

Greg Galle
I think, I think everybody's concerned about AI. AI, what they're doing is they're really taking they're really looking at data and how to use data and how to use technologies like AI to, to provide far superior advice and counsel to their customers. And so I think they're looking at this in terms of, you know, as the kind of assistant or copilot that will help them aggregate and understand and interpret very vast amounts of data, and to use that powerfully for their for their customers and clients. The other thing that's really been changing in the insurance industry, is this sort of expansion into employee benefits, and wellness and health and wellness and well-being. And so started looking at how do we use this data to not only insure against the unknown or the unforeseen and to deal with things like Property and Casualty and that kind of thing? Or Arizona health? Or how, how do we write how do we create healthier organizations that actually require less? They're going to have fewer claims, right? Because they're actually healthy, well, productive, organized, I'm

Greg Voisen
working with one accident, San Ramon, and they are called Medi Karma m-e-d-i-k-a-r-m-a. Yeah, you share that with that they literally suck all of your health information into their app, you take a health risk assessment, and they use predictive analytics to actually say, Hey, Greg, based on the current data, we actually see where you might have you know, prostate cancer in five years, or you're prone to diabetes or whatever, the carriers are getting a board because that predictive analytics from the AI, taking both your health risk assessment, whatever, is really, it's very quite accurate. It's, it's pretty damn accurate. And I think you're going to get more and more people come aboard. Now.

Greg Galle
You just made me think of something. So that example, another client that we worked with is called nav C. Now C is the organization responsible for the design build and maintenance of the US naval fleet. Okay, and in the same way that Netta karma is looking at your health data. They're looking at all of the data produced by the operation of naval fleet and looking at building a digital twin of the fleet. What can you do with a digital twin of the US naval fleet? Man? I mean, everything from a peace and security standpoint, how do you deploy it around the world? But also the predictive analytics, when it was a ship need to come into port? Can you have the part that is going to need ready to install before it breaks? You know, what, how can you reduce hazards that you create to something that's a great risk to sailors of fire onboard? Right? So how did you start to use that? How do you start to use that data and these powerful tools to start to operate healthier humans, as you're talking about healthier, you know, a healthier fleet of ships and aircraft around the world? Well, I

Greg Voisen
think as we've all seen, this war fought in Ukraine, and we've seen the use of drones. Now, I'm not saying we didn't have drones before. But when you look at the reduction and kind of the loss of life of people flying jet planes and sending drones out for intelligence, and to actually do part of the warfare itself, it's pretty fascinating. And it's advanced a lot to be able to say, hey, let's go put up, you know, 10 drones in the sky, and we're going to be able to see everything.

Greg Galle
Yeah, and I suspect we don't even know the, the, the we know, just a little teeny bit of what's really going on how technology is being used in that conflict.

Greg Voisen
Oh, I, I can guarantee you that. I want to drive people to the website, because you've got two eBooks up at the website, free downloadable. And I'd like you to speak the listeners about the five innovation mistakes. Try one. And the other book is the five crisis mistakes, which is the other eBook. And the reason I wanted to get these eBooks in is there's nothing better than a little eBook for people to download, to really get a quick, you know, kind of take on what soft next is about. So can you speak with our listeners about the five innovation? Yeah, sure.

Greg Galle
And of the two eBooks that you're talking about, we really we created as really to help people have conversations inside their organization. So you know, we always benefit from people who are ready to try change and, and to create change in their organization. Sometimes they need a little bit of assistance, in terms of going and having the hard conversations inside their own organization. So these two books were really these two little booklets are aimed at that person who wants to create a change, and it gives him some fodder for those conversations. So in the in the five mistakes of innovation, the fact that that book, the first one really is proclaiming that you want a culture of innovation, we hear that a lot. We go into clients, and they said we want a culture of innovation. And the reality is that culture is the outcome of having a system it's not the input.

Greg Voisen
What we think is going to turn on a light switch and create the culture of innovation. Oh, no, no, you don't.

Greg Galle
You might you might you know, if you turn those lights switch on or off mic great a culture that responds to light. Right? Exactly. Culture is an outcome of something, not an input. But the emphasis in that booklet really is on the idea of a culture of experimentation. What I'm saying is embrace being experimental embrace be the idea of discovery and learning. So that's the first mistake is this we want a culture of innovation it comes from, and it's this story is shared in the think wrong book of us going into visit JP Morgan in New York, and seeing this big jumbotron sign saying you know, fostering a culture of innovation. And when I sat down with the six heads of innovation for JP Morgan, I asked them, what does it say in your lobby? And they said, we don't know. It's lip service, right. And so it's not enough to give lip service by saying we're building a culture of innovation, you actually need to create a culture where, where experimentation, discovery and learning are constantly happening. that the second mistake and this is important for big organizations and organizations of any size really, other than a brand new startup and that is confusing an intrapreneur with an entrepreneur intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs are not the same. If you're an established organization. You're not like a startup and that you have a lot to lose. You've built up a customer base, you've built up products or services or experiences. You've built up a reputation and you when you do something new you may be putting that at risk. So you need to be smart about how you do that. The other thing is you need to understand You have a lot of resource. And a lot of you have assets that are available that most entrepreneurs don't have. And so you really want to leverage those. You really want to leverage those resources as assets and make the most out of them and not make it difficult for the intrapreneurs in your organization to do that work. The third mistake in that booklet talks about asking for ROI too soon. So the whole idea of it when I'm not sure what the problem is, I'm not sure what the solution is, I certainly can't tell you what the return on investment is going to be. So you really want to reframe the question, what we do is we talked about asking for LSI, rather than ROI, what's the learning from investment? So what will we know by from taking this next step that we didn't know before, that will make us more certain about the problem or make us more certain about the solution, and we're ready to decide whether we're going to pursue that new business or that new process or that new policy. The fourth mistake, and I think this is the, this is the one that's really kind of preoccupying us these days, it is the lack of a systematic approach that is just saying, hey, you know, innovation is the is the realm of the creative and let them just go be, you know, creative where their black berets and their black turtleneck sweaters, and they're, you know, creative. It just doesn't happen that way. As

Greg Voisen
You and I both have these black shirts.

Greg Galle
The exactly, well, I, you know, I went to art school, and I said that it's so funny, because our people in art school are always putting their nose up, but how conformist everybody is, and then you'll look around and say, oh, they're all conforming to what they think exactly,

Greg Voisen
we all look like, we look like all robots, right?

Greg Galle
Yeah, exactly. But so this mistake of lacking a systematic approach and says, actually take a portfolio based systems based approach to your innovation and start thinking about your portfolios. What do you expect your return to be from the different portfolios? What kind of impact do you want? How do you how do you wait, the different forms of capital that you're going to invest in those are that you hope that they will create? Oh, it's being very impacted a rigorous and disciplined, very rigorous and disciplined about how you're going to pursue this. The fifth mistake in that book is really around the misunderstanding what the roles are, and how it's going to be adopted inside your organization. What often happens, what we see in a lot of our client organizations is that they, somebody gets the innovation bug, and I look, we the word in the word innovation, sometimes feel a little tired, because people have been talking about innovation as being crucial for decades. And most organizations have been failing to realize the potential of it, they've been, they've been dissatisfied with the results. And often what happens is an executive thinks it's important, but they don't take a systems based approach. managers don't want to have anything to do with it, because it's highly disruptive. Staff level folks get excited, because it's an opportunity to do something new, something exciting within their role or within their organization, but they're not getting the support that they need from managers. And they're not getting the governance and the executive decision making and leadership that they need from, from the top of the organization. So getting clear about that is essential. So that those are the those are the five

Greg Voisen
There are certain industries Gray, let's face it, that do better with this than others. And I think, you know, we cannot wait, we've you and I have grown up. If you and I weren't digital natives. Yeah. But you know, Apple came along Microsoft came along Google came along, Adobe came along, all these companies that you live in their backyard came along, right. And basically, they, they became very cash rich, because society just, we all ran in a direction to adopt whatever it was that they had. And they had the resources. So the innovation that was coming out of these companies, and I Oh, I still commend Apple, maybe not as much because I don't see as much rapid innovation coming out of Apple.

Greg Galle
iPhone 14, what do you mean, that's that rapid? Version? product?

Greg Voisen
Well, what I see is, you know, again, it's marketing to the public, a few more features in a phone or whatever it might be. My point to you is this. We've gotten so used to hearing this because the whole NASDAQ is filled with just, we were reporting to our stockholders, that we're still making a profit because we're still innovating and still selling products. And I always think that's, I think it's important. But on the other hand, if you don't have a fund set aside that says we've got $1 billion to do innovation, and you know, it's going into this innovation arena. And I know that many of these companies have huge funds that are they're doing that with it. But you know, when you when you take this down to the small guy, they're not sitting on a billion dollar fund to innovate. What would you comment? I mean, what are they? What are the biggest mistakes? And how do they become wildly creative?

Greg Galle
Well, I mean, I think I think, you know, some of this is, like all things easier said than done, right. But I think being structured about how you're going to spend your time and things, if you're a small for small business, or you're just getting started, you have a small operation, you're not going to have the luxury of saying, I'm going to have a whole team of people, I'm going to put full time on my innovation system, they're just going to focus on what's next. And I have a team that's focused on operating now. So you have to you actually have to develop the discipline of doing that yourself and say, how much of my time am I going to allocate to now? And how much of my time are we going to allocate to next? How much of my resources am I going to allocate? How much of my, how much of my revenue am I going to allocate to those things? And you have to get you have to get disciplined about it, you have to say, you know, some of the work I'm going to be doing is about improving the performance of what is and I'm going to be innovative, but are there going to be small little innovations, incremental things that are improvements to how we're doing things right now, you know, you're super experimental in terms of playing with new technologies and looking at how could this make my life better or easier, or produce a higher quality product all the time, you're constantly doing that, then there's some things they're looking at where you're going to spend, okay, how much of my time I'm going to spend on growth opportunities, where I'm going to bring something new to my existing customers, or I'm going to modify something I'm doing so can access a new market, how much of my time I'm going to spend on coming up with totally disruptive things, right, where I'm just going to change the game, right? And, and you're a finite resource, so you've got to think about it, I am the fund, right? Because I can't I don't have a billion dollars. So I am the fund are my 10 people, or my five people, or my three people were the fund, how we're going to take that fund of knowledge and skills and talents, and how I'm going to deploy it across a portfolio of opportunities. Some of its going to be on now some of its going to be on next within next summer, it's going to be incremental improvement, someone who's going to be growth, some of us is going to be reinvention. Some of it is even going to be around what we call maximize, which are what are the things we're going to stop doing because when I stopped doing them, they free up my capital.

Greg Voisen
A really important point,

Greg Galle
We’re bad at subtraction, we're bad at stopping. So as a as a species, you and I says oh, species are really good at taking on more, doing more doing more really bad and saying, Okay, this, I'm going to stop doing it, as I get out of it, I'm going to capture the value that was generated by doing it, but I'm not going to do that thing anymore.

Greg Voisen
I think that that again, this comes back to the way our brains are wired. Fear can't enter the picture if you're going to be a trailblazer. So to trailblaze you have to be willing to take risks. If we throw these words up on a board, and we said Trailblazer risk, you know, our memes, what's actually defining who we are as a person and whatever, and just put it in a blender and mixed it all up and said, you know, what's the new formula for somebody who would innovate, create, while at the same time looking at that? And there? Here's my question is going in view of the role of somebody who's a leader, in these promoting this culture of innovation, as you said, you don't really get a culture, well, you have a system that will result in a culture that system that will result and that leaders effectively integrate the principles from your book. So I'm going to say think wrong. And the training and acts Academy, which you just did, right.

Greg Galle
Yeah, we do the leadership next intensive we just did in Maryland. And then we had the NEXT Academy is our online academy. It's where people can get access to the think wrong course and the leaders of the next course, and then some tips on how to run effective innovation.

Greg Voisen
What people should know that I think it's only like 199, or something right?

Greg Galle
Or the think wrong course. Yeah. So that's very exciting.

Greg Voisen
I mean, it's very accessible for people to dip their toe into this. All I'm trying to tell people are listening. You don't have to dive in for 1000s of dollars. They've got ways, you know, look, hey, start off just getting a book if the blood makes sense. If this makes sense to you, this is your least barrier to entry. Then you can go online and you can sign up for the courses, right? And then the next thing would be to basically go through the and a site, where are you? You can do it online or You can do it in person, right? And you have those setup on there where people could attend, right. And I don't know what the money is involved in it. But believe me, for everyone listening, it'd be the best investment you'd ever make. Only because it's going to open to your mind to what's really available for your organization, your people, and to actually change things and embrace change and innovation, versus being resistant to it. You know, you said this a minute ago. But you said, hey, rapid prototyping and learning from failure. Yeah, okay. I don't mind using the word failure. I like to use learning experiences, though. Can you share some examples of how this iterative approach has led to breakthrough innovations for your clients? Because when I think of prototyping, I think, okay, great. I'm going to go take this, and I'm going to make this part and this part and this part, we're going to put it together, and we're going to test it, we're going to make it some people go through that. But how are some of your clients used what you've taught them to rapidly innovate and to get some breakthrough innovations?

Greg Galle
Yeah, so I'll give you a couple of stories. One is, is connected to the health app that you're talking about it was it was actually in the pet space. And so we were working with a company, they're a pet food company. And they were very interested in technologies that would assess the health of your dog or your cat. And they were Yeah, and they're building, they're, they're using these technologies, and they're starting to build some prototypes. And their, their, their learning was that the was that the technology worked in terms of indicating whether or not your cat or your dog was in good health, or whether they had some sort of a condition that was emerging that needed to be treated. So it had some great properties in terms of being predictive. They were testing the idea of what was the solution, they are imagining doable, but what they hadn't done was really, the thing that came before that which was around is at wanted. And so if we're building a new solution, a new product offering for the marketplace, we want to make sure that there's going to be market demand, right? For this. And so, working with them, we see that you're able to sort of step back, and they're, they're able to discover that that in fact, by engaging with, with customers, and talking with them, having open ended interviews and, and really just listening for what the customer was telling them, what they learned was that some of this predictive stuff was, was scary to the customer, like they, like a litter tray that tells me my cat is going to die in nine months is not what I want, right? Is a urine analysis that says, “Your Cat's got kidney failure, right? It is, and it's about to have a bad nine months, and you're going to be six months, and you're, and you're going to go along for that, right. So, so a lot of these technologies, we're just giving them more concrete knowledge about the expiration date of their pet. What they learned was that people what people really wanted was to know how their how their dog or their cat was feeling it this is going to sound crazy, Greg, but what people wanted was to be able to talk to their dogs and cats and had their dogs and cats. And so this was a big epiphany for the client, because what they realized was this, they were way too focused on the technology and not focused on the relationship between the Guardian and the animal. And, and what they discovered out of that was they said, okay, look, we can't turn everybody into Dr. Doolittle. But we can start to think about some proxies for spoken language. And what they ended up looking at was a health indicator that could be measured with technology that would show you whether your dog or your cat was in a state of mind that was sort of at peace at ease, you know, calm or whether they are feeling anxious or stressed. Ease you can do to inter mediate, right, so if a dog is if a dog is stressed, and you're at work, you can deploy a toy for them to play with, or you can have a treat be dispensed down, right so there are things you could do even if you're not present with technology that sort of allowed people to get what they were looking for by hand but by this this desire or dream that they had to be able to speak with their animals. I just like how are you doing? What can I how can I help you can I, you know, for the equivalent of can I give you a rub on the shoulders, right? It's kind of the relax you and to calm me down. So, so it was through this. It was actually by stepping back and looking at the stage I visit wanted by doing empathetic interviewing. And then by beginning to prototype and visualize these alternative solutions very quickly, they were able to learn that and one of the really amazing results they got is before any product existed at all, they put an ad up on Facebook. And they got 10,000 responses to the ad. And it was just a fake product, right? They just, it was just like the simplest prototype, you can come up with a simple ad posted, or they got massive response to it. And what so what that said is, boy, this thing is really wanted. And now we have 10,000 names of people that we can beta test with. Because well, that

Greg Voisen
feedback cycle, whether you're doing crowdfunding, I have a friend that owns launch boom. And Mark does that kind of testing first, before he'll ever take a product on and I think what you just explained about this company that one had initially to make an app to determine if their dog was healthy, and then took a step back to really look at what was more important from the guardian. Right, which is, is my dog happy? Can I deploy a toy? Can I do whatever. And I've seen some things that actually do that. And along the lines of the kitty litter, there's a guy that's advertising now that when the cat pees, it turns four different colors. So I don't know if it's actually out there and telling them what their health is. But I have actually seen the ad so

Greg Galle
it will come. No doubt it will come. I think what I just heard last week that people were very excited about their robotic cat litter trays. I don't know about you, but that's

Greg Voisen
it. Yeah. Yeah. So pretty interesting. But, you know, like, the, the, I don't know how many billions every year is invested in, in our cats and our dogs and our animals. But, you know, us Yeah. And I think if we could speak to them, meaning like in the English language, I think there's other ways to, to actually connect with your animals. But I thought that's fascinating. That's a great was really good, good example, about you helping a company, take a step back, get some feedback, use the feedback to go into a different loop, and then take it into a whole new area. Now to sum up the interview, we want to conclude, what would your advice be to people that are listening this podcast, whether they're in a team, their leader, who want to embrace innovation, and adopt the principles you teach, to drive positive change within the organization? I know, my son is the head of a big team at Adobe. And this is something they're always like dealing with, right? It's like, okay, how do I get these 32 people aboard, aligned in the same direction, saying, this is where I want to go with us. And this is really what we should do?

Greg Galle
Yeah, so there's, there's two pieces to it. One is getting the alignment that you just talked about super important. So being clear that, hey, our leader, the executives, the managers, and the practitioners, the innovation team leaders, or the innovators on teams, they all need to be aligned, and they need to be aligned to a shared set of things. And I'm going to give you an equation, he talked about equation. This is an equation that, that I picked up from Rita McGrath, who we sometimes co teach with in Colombia,

Greg Voisen
see around corners, let's go see around some corners.

Greg Galle
I love anything readers write, I'm going to read. So readers, the equation is T equals D times V times p, and I'll tell you what I've heard it before. So t equals the transformation. So if I have my executives, my managers and my innovation team leaders and innovators, so say, hey, the transformation that we're aligned on the transformation we're trying to create, what's the from to shift, right, the predictable path to the old path, what's the big shift we're trying to create? So that's the T equals d. Now D is dissatisfaction. So that is, that is our dissatisfaction with the current state with that with that predictable path. So we have to be dissatisfied with the way things are, if we're going to change them to how we want them to be. There has to be enough discontent with the way things are in order to make that move. So again, do my executives, do my managers and do my, my teams understand what the different kinds of dissatisfaction are four different constituents, different stakeholders? Because what dissatisfaction for an executive might be very different than somebody else? And so have we identified that? Do we have a clear vision of the future state that we're trying to create? What's the what is that bold path future state we're trying to create? Are we all aligned towards that? Do we find that compelling? Is that worth pursuing? Is it worth giving up the comfort of where we are today to where we want to be? And then finally do have a process for getting there and All of this work that we're doing around things wrong and all of the work that we're doing around leaders. And next, teaching people how to build a system of innovation is about putting in place a process for getting there not just once, but repeatedly over and over again. So how do I get from the current state to the future state? And then once I'm into a future state, how do I create it? How do I create the next one? And how do I create the next one? So it's a repeating cycle of driving positive?

Greg Voisen
And that formula is a great way to wrap this up? Because, you know, I was thinking as you were going through the letters, and I was just recalling to myself, I'm like, okay, I've heard that, you know, I know it. And I go all the way back to Wilson learning, Larry Wilson. And Larry Wilson used to use that formula when he would do his ropes training out in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now he put 1000s of people through the training. And I really think that's an excellent way to kind of pull this all together, especially when it comes to positive change within sight of organizations and how you're going to make that happen. And for all my listeners, Greg galley is one of the authors of this book, go out and get things wrong. You can order it off Amazon, you can order it from their website, I think, can you

Greg Galle
get it from Amazon for sure. They're the biggest seller.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. And it's an easy read, by the way, folks, looks how it's like, it's like an eight laid out. He's got a new book coming up. I can't wait to see what that one's all about. He says,

Greg Galle
I've got a great co-author, but I can't tell you who it is.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, all right. Whoever it is, I'm sure it's going to be good.

Greg Galle
Super excited to be working with my co-author.

Greg Voisen
Super. Well, Greg, thank you for being on inside personal growth, sharing some of your insights in your wisdom, about, you know, performance systems versus innovation systems, versus all these examples. You've given my audience about. All the things that you've actually done and changes you've seen with inside companies have adopted it. Again, everybody listening, go to solve next.com. There you can find the courses there. You can find everything you need to know about Greg, there's those two little eBooks we talked about that you could download on the mistakes, definitely get those and read them. And you have a little button push there. You can reach out to somebody inside the solve next team and I'm sure they'll correspond with you, Greg, thanks so much for being on inside personal growth.

Greg Galle
Thanks, Greg. awesome to see you again. As always, take care, buddy. Thanks.