Tour of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies

A few months ago, I took a half-day tour at the University of Southern California’s astonishing Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). As a citizen, I set aside my view of current military engagements and allowed myself to be amazed at the leading-edge training that ICT is developing for our soldiers. As a learning professional in a company that prides itself on innovative use of technology in learning, I was blown away by a new glimpse at the art of the possible (given enough budget).

According to the tour, the idea for ICT was first raised by a woman named Anita Jones when she was the Director of Defense Research & Engineering at the Pentagon. She observed her son’s immersion in video games and wondered about the use of video games in training for the military. A few workshops, conferences, and publications followed, leading to the founding of ICT in 1999 through a contract with the U.S. Army. Its mission was to create synthetic experiences so compelling that participants would react as though the simulation was real. As the tour guide put it, “We were trying to create the holodeck from Star Trek.”

I learned on the tour that from the start, the human dimensions of simulation had priority. While other organizations were focused on functional simulations to develop the motor skills involved in driving a tank or flying an airplane, ICT was focused on simulations to develop skills in interpersonal interaction, critical-thinking and decision-making. The examples shown on our tour included examples of learning simulations for:
-Leadership 

-Cultural awareness
-Negotiation
-Post-traumatic stress disorder therapy 

ICT tackles these difficult challenges by teaming experts in learning, graphics, and computer science together with creative professionals from Hollywood and the videogame industry. Together their teams produce immersive, interactive media for learning and entertainment.

Projects generally start with a cognitive task analysis to understand the activities to be simulated. Subject matter experts describe detailed steps, including physical movements, environmental factors, mental activities such as judgment calls, assessments, or problem-solving, and emotional responses. Care is taken to surface not just the behaviors of actors in the simulation, but also their thinking and emotional processes. Many recent projects focus on soldiers working in the Middle East, so cultural components also receive due care.

With the focus on developing simulations to build skills in areas such as leadership and negotiation, the emotional content is particularly important. Compelling stories are a key way that emotional context and cultural content are included in the simulation experience. ICT uses “story nets” to convey a series of events over a sequence of turns. The story changes (within the limits of the simulation) depending on the learner’s actions and the responses of other parties in the simulation. So, for example, if the soldier using a negotiation simulation foregoes the opportunity to prepare and then, uninformed, takes an action that is disrespectful of the local culture, the tribal leader with whom he is negotiating might derail the conversation.

Non-verbal communication behavior by the avatars -  their gestures, facial expressions, and stance -  also has key importance in realistically conveying human emotion. ICT has advanced the state of the art in rendering avatars through innovations in lighting, photography, and skin scanning. Their advances have been used not only in simulations for the military, but also in Hollywood movies, for which they earned an Academy Award. Realistic avatars help learners become immersed in the simulation.

ICT sees itself as a research center, and so of course it undertakes a huge amount of R&D. This ranges from foundational research in the construction of virtual humans and learning simulations, to the development of enabling technologies such as the “virtual human toolkit” and the LAST method (learning with adaptive simulation and training), to a series of prototype applications.

According to a speaker on my tour, it considers all of its products to be prototypes. Clients don’t necessarily expect deployment, although many of the “prototypes” have been good enough to be widely fielded. During the tour, I saw excerpts from Bilat, which provides training and practice in cross-cultural negotiation, Urban Sim, which was the subject of a recent article in The Atlantic, and the Mobile Counter-IED Interactive Trainer, a blended learning solution delivered to soldiers in the housing of a shipping container which can be dropped at nearly any location.

In addition to conducting R&D to develop new prototypes, ICT also publishes studies about the impact of their innovations. They have found, for example, that the serious-game-based approach to teaching intercultural communication skills in ELECT BiLAT successfully led to learner’s mastery of cultural rules relating to meeting phases and the timing of communicative actions.

How much does all of this cost? In 2004, the Army awarded ICT $100million to continue its overall R&D work. The Mobile Counter-IED Interactive Trainer was the result of a $10million contract in 2009. 

Clearly, the military’s need for state-of-the-art training tools stands to benefit the videogaming industry and its customers who are willing to pay for ever-more-realistic scenarios.

My work involves accelerating the development of corporate leaders. How can we apply the insights and technology developed by ICT? We’ve got enough scale (almost 35,000 first-line managers). If we invested $250 per manager in annual leadership vitality education, that would be $8.75million…more than enough to produce something really compelling. It is possible that one solution, even one with a lot of story nets, meet our needs globally? These are conversations worth having.

The CEO of the Future

A few months ago, a colleague asked me to read a speech given by Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, at the Economic Club of Washington, DC on May 12, 2009. It was an inspiring speech. Even just reading the words - - without the benefit of seeing her deliver them - - you get a sense not only of Nooyi’s intelligence, but also her warmth and humor and humility.

Her message is that the CEO of the future must “marry performance with purpose.” This isn’t a new idea. Peter Drucker advocated that the deeper purpose of a company lies beyond producing a profit for shareholders. Contributing something useful that customers really need is the essence of business. Nooyi goes even further, arguing that the company of the future has to see itself as an organization rooted in the community, with ethical obligations to pay back to society.

She notes that CEOs of the future will still need to know how to operate a company, manage the economics of the firm, and lead people. Those capabilities will continue to be table stakes. But leading a company that both produces performance and serves a social purpose will take a different kind of leader than today’s typical cost-cutting whiz or a financial engineer, or short-term-returns-at-all-costs hard liner. This implies a different kind of shareholder, as well - - one with long-term interests.

There is a lot more to her speech, and you have the link so you can read it and decide what you think about her ideas. As often happens, I’m now seeing variations of these ideas everywhere…from IBM’s worldwide investment in Smarter Planet, including transportation, food, healthcare, utilities, and other public goods….to an article titled “Toward a Common Wealth” in my Cal Berkeley alumni magazine…to a new book by Rosabeth Moss Kanter called Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good.

One more thing about Nooyi’s talk. Only a woman CEO could have given this speech. I love that she talked about her own mother in the speech and that she described how she writes every six months to the parents of her 29 Executive Committee members, telling them about how their grown sons or daughters contribute to Pepsi, and thanking them for the gift of these individuals.

So go read it, and tell me what you think!

Global Work

In the course of career discussions with mentors, managers, colleagues and friends, working globally is always something that comes up. Working internationally is something I’m paid to do, and I’m happy about that! Working globally is often hard, and it is a challenge that I truly enjoy. Why?

Maybe it’s a natural strength. According to Marcus Buckingham, each of us has strengths. He defines these as specific activities that “make you feel strong.” In his methodology, you can look for signs of strength in the following ways:
• If you have some success at it, it may be a strength.
• If, before you do it, you find your self instinctively looking forward to it, it may be a strength.
• If, while you are doing it, you find yourself easily able to concentrate (your synapses firing, your brain literally growing), it may be a strength.
• If, after you’ve done it, it feels like it fulfills a need of yours, it may be a strength.

I have had success working globally, I do look forward to it, I can lose track of time when I’m engrossed in a conversation or running a workshop with colleagues halfway around the world, and I do get a sense of fulfillment. I love learning about people everywhere, and in the process learning about myself. This sums up as a set of positive emotions around this kind of work. (NB – I get a similar charge working with colleagues nearby, but there is a little something extra that comes with connecting with others around the planet.)

Maybe it’s enlightened self-interest.  As Thomas Friedman has written about with such clarity in The World is Flat, if politics and terrorism don’t get in the way, knowledge workers like me will increasingly be part of a single global network. The ability to collaborate with others throughout the world will be more than an advantage, it will be table stakes to get into the game of knowledge work. As we continue to find activities that can be digitized and decomposed and shared with lower cost providers around the planet, then the touchy-feely human relationship and consulting skills that I have will also become more important than ever. Effective communication among people is hard enough, and even more so across distance and culture. So maybe it’s not just a natural strength, but also a sober reckoning of economic advantage.

Maybe it’s a family legacy. Although my grandfather Martin L. Ehrmann passed away when I was only six years old, I retain strong memories and a feeling of attachment for him. He was a mineralogist, and traveled the world collecting minerals at a time when global travel was far more difficult and far less comfortable than it is for us today. He wrote several chapters for a book about some of his adventures to Burma (Myanmar) and other locations where just getting there took a week or more. He seemed to be able to adapt to do business in any country and relished extending his network around the world; I aspire to the same. He was able to pick up a little of the language wherever he went; I too, find it easy to learn at least a few words of any language (and I can do better than that in several). He counted many of his business counterparts as his friends; the same can be said for me (even in a company where this sometimes feels a little counter to the culture). So maybe the explanation goes beyond strengths or skills or economics to something that lies in my genes.

Of course, there is a lot to complain about, too, working globally.  But that's for another post.

Do you work globally?  How do you find it?

Lessons learned from Zappos.com

Experiencing a recent day at Zappos was eye-opening. Never heard of Zappos.com? The company has been the subject of articles in a number of magazines because of its rapid growth and business success, enabled by an obsession with customer service and a unique culture. More recently, Zappos has been in the news because it is soon to be acquired by Amazon.

Zappo’s business model is straightforward: Sell shoes (along with eyewear, watches, bags and apparel) online. Zappos believes that one third of U.S. retail transactions will one day occur on line and that people will buy from the company that provides the best service and selection. Zappos wants to be that company. Shoes were their foundation, but they believe that as long as they focus on service, they can move into any category. The business today is focused on the U.S. market. With the upcoming Amazon deal, the worldwide market is coming into focus.

I didn’t visit Zappos to learn about shoes or service. I went to learn about their approach to leadership development. Even without the looming Amazon deal, they have been a company in high growth mode, facing the need to grow leaders to keep up with the pace of their business expansion.

The company’s revenue was $1.6m in 2000, $184m in 2004, and over $1b in 2008. The number of items stocked is continually increasing. The day I visited 4.6 million different items were in stock from over 1,300 brands. IBM’s growth markets are also facing growth-related leadership development challenges, and I hoped that an exchange of ideas would be fruitful.

I did have a meaningful exchange with the “Pipeline Team,” as Zappos calls their professional development group, but my most powerful insights didn’t turn out to be about leadership development. Instead, I was struck by how Zappos has defined and executed its version of being a values-based company.

Zappos has ten core values from which the culture, brand and business strategies derive:

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

I observed a remarkable degree of congruence between these espoused values, their physical manifestation in the organization, and the behaviors of people who work there.

Artifacts of all kinds reflect these values. Service is the focus of everything. I was wowed when the person who set up my visit offered to send a Zappos shuttle to the airport to pick me up. The shuttle driver was a young woman with several tattoos and facial piercings - - she didn’t look like a typical corporate driver - - reflecting the largely Gen Y workforce. She was very friendly and professionally inquisitive, and seemed genuinely interested in my reason for visiting. I learned that she works on the “Help Desk” which provides all kinds of internal services (but not IT support). She let me know that as part of her job, she updates the flat screen display in the lobby with the list of the day’s visitors and light news items. She wanted me to know that my name would be appearing on the display. In addition, since it happened to be the birthday of the first IBM PC, there would be a little story about that. (Did she go hunting for IBM news? I was so wowed that I forgot to ask.)

The Zappos core values are printed on cards and bookmarks, reproduced on employee-produced artwork that hangs in the hallways, scrawled on graffiti in the stairwells (this practice is encouraged and enabled with a supply of handy markers), posted on bathroom mirrors, and used as the basis for an annual 'Culture Book’ that compiles employees’ ideas about the culture and what it means to them. All employees are invited by the CEO to contribute, and this book is printed and bound for distribution to employees, prospective employees, business partners, and even some customers. Every contribution is included. As a visitor, I was given a copy of the most recent Culture Book.

On arrival at the Zappos HQ, I noticed that the best parking space was reserved for the person who had created the most WOW. Employees can nominate their colleagues for this honor, which is awarded weekly. The WOW factor is embedded into core processes. Zappos focuses on delivering on line purchases quickly, often overnight. To do that, they warehouse everything they sell and they won’t make available any item that is not physically in stock. Shipping is free, both for outbound deliveries and for returns. Workers in the call center (called the Customer Loyalty Team) write personal thank you cards to customers. Sustained ratings on the Net Promoter Survey (NPS) are above 90%, an unheard of high level.

The other core values are also visibly evidenced. When I entered the HQ building, the first thing that caught my eye was an enormous wall display and calendar of classes offered to employees. The pursuit of growth and learning was also demonstrated by a half dozen tall bookshelves full of business and personal improvement books. These are available for free to any employee. As a visitor, I was invited to take books, too. Some of these are used in classes, others are discussed in employee-led book clubs, and the rest are simply for enrichment.

The values of fun, weirdness, family spirit, and teaming were also quite evident. An employee-organized egg-drop contest was happening on the day of my visit. Teams of employees from a dozen departments had followed a set of constraints to construct contraptions that would hopefully protect their eggs during a drop from a second story balcony. Around lunchtime, a crowd gathered outside (in Las Vegas’ blazing summer sunshine) to watch the contest unfold. A member of the Pipeline Team noted that this kind of activity happens frequently, but not always with such success. Any employee who gets an idea to do something like this is free to pursue it. Not only do wacky activities help to keep the culture going, they also serve as tests of (non-positional) leadership, and can provide opportunities for constructive feedback.

So how does an organization get such congruence between words, deeds, and beliefs? The employee recruitment and selection process focuses first on cultural fit. Applicants have to pass a culture screening before their skills or qualifications are considered. The application form itself is a reflection of the culture. It includes the normal questions, along with “If you could be a superhero, what superhero would you be and why” and also a crossword puzzle about Zappos. Applicants who ask questions like “Do I really have to complete these silly parts?” or who leave them blank are screened out for indicating too little inclination for fun. In one recent calendar quarter, the company received 6,000+ applications and hired only 45 people.

While I observed a great deal of accomplishment in living by their values, Zapponians think they can do better. Every employee is challenged to make one improvement per week that makes Zappos better reflect its core values. It’s the accumulation of small things that seems to make a difference – making forms more fun to fill out, or organizing group activities, or sending a customer an extra special thank you note. The company has also proven that it can take on big changes. In its short life, there have been three complete swapouts of the store/pick/pack infrastructure and technology at Zappos’ warehouse and distribution center in Kentucky. A large wall display illustrates the evolution and communicates key real-time performance statistics (number of items stocked, number of items shipped, revenue).

What if you asked your employees to make one improvement per week to better reflect the values of your company, and reinforced this expectation vigilantly, and published stories associated with rising to the challenge, and encouraged colleagues to microblog or blog to share their improvement each week?

The real purpose of my visit was to specifically focus on Zappos' leadership development programs. All new employees, regardless of how senior their level, must attend a 4-week new hire program. The content includes eight hours on Zappos history and five hours on Zappos culture. The program for all new hires also includes 40 hours on the phones in the Customer Loyalty Team. At the end of the new hire program, participants are offered $2,000 if they decide that they don’t want to work for Zappos. The company thus weeds out those few who made it through the screening process, but who are not truly a good fit for the organization. If passion for the business is a key element of leadership, Zappos establishes it from the outset.

Formal leadership and professional development education continues throughout an employee’s first 18 months. Upon promotion to first line manager, another set of classes is required. Those promoted to more senior roles complete a further leadership curriculum.

In addition to the formal leadership development curriculum, there is an on-site life coach, Dr. Vik. His guidance and coaching - - available to any employee who elects to seek it out - - supports and enables the development of leadership behaviors and overall career goals.

Will the winning formula at Zappos survive the merger with Amazon? Can this kind of culture persist in a larger organization (there are only about 1,500 employees today). I'm looking forward to finding out!