100 kepner quotes

© 2015 Thinking Dimensions Global

100 Kepner QuotesChuck Kepner’s Words of Wisdom in

Innovation, Decision Making, Problem Solving, Collaboration, and more…

www.thinkingdimensions.com/resources/blog/kepner

http://www.thinkingdimensions.com/resources/blog/kepner


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INNOVATION


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As some ancient wise-ass put it, “If it was easy to do, somebody would have already done it.” Breaking new ground is hard,

hard work.


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Thinking about innovation… People most readily accept new ideas that are consistent with the values and

concepts they already have. They tent to reject new ideas that are inconsistent with what they “know to be right.” If there is a conflict between the new ideas and the old, established ones, they try to find a way to make the new ones fit the old ones. That’s the way it has been since the days of the caveman. That is the barrier we have to face

in getting them to accept the ideas of innovation.


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Very often, the first alternative suggested is greeted with open arms. “Hey that’s a good idea,” and the search is over. The best ideas

usually come out later, after people have had a chance to think about it.


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There is another, more tragic, reason why managers are not as creative as they could be.

Creativity demands extra effort.


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New ideas are always out there.

Where?

Out there, held by people who haven’t been asked to contribute yet.


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Anyone can make an ordinary decision, do the same old, indefinitely, time after time.

That’s safe and conservative, can’t be criticized as radical. And it can’t get anyone or anything ahead, either. So it isn’t really

safe, after all.


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It is useless to tell other persons, “Now think creatively.” HOW? What do we DO? But it is

easy to teach others a series of behaviors, a process to follow when a decision has to be made. Do this, do that, do another thing. Then, when a

creative conclusion emerges, these people will say, “Wow! We thought of this ourselves!” And they

will be right!


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You don’t teach how to be innovative or creative. It’s there as a characteristic of the human animal. You create the conditions

within which it can come out and be active.


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Ideas are not ephemeral, pixie-like packages of information floating in the air. Knowledge for any individual comes from experience, whether that be from books,

lectures, incidents that have been observed, or face-to-face encounters.


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As the storehouse of knowledge grows, so do the possibilities of associations between the items tucked away in the recesses of the brain. Combinations are formed and more complex associations are filed away. As you

know more, you can do more with what you know.


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Why are some companies more successful than others?...

…We don’t think it’s a mystery. We think it’s the quality of thinking in the organization. They

come up with innovative solutions to their problems more often than others.


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“If you could only bottle that and sell it,” we said, “You could do wonders. The world would

be yours.” Well, now you can. You can engineer Logical Innovation, and apply it and control it, whenever and however you want.


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From a fantasy wish of a few years ago, innovation and creativity have now become

a reality tool for any manager to use to guarantee progress and improvement.

Learn it, use it, and enjoy being out in front of the pack.


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The invention, the finished product, was the result of sifting through vast bodies of

information to find combinations of ideas that could be translated into reality, into an

entity that would work in the practical world.


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Model of Innovation


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The secret of the Logical Innovation Process is its structure and discipline.


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When most people speak of innovation or creativity, they think of some ability that is mysterious and ephemeral, a capability that

some people have and others don’t, and that lies beyond the bounds of logic and rationality, something almost magical. We disagree. We

think that innovation is a supremely logical act.


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…creativity is a force that you can control and engineer to do just what you

want it to do.


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What is an innovation? It is the combination of elements that have not been

combined before, to perform a specific function. It is a new way of doing

something, better than the previous way.


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[Thomas Edison] had an idea about an electric light. He talked it over with some of his people and they decided on what they would have to

know to make a successful design… Finally they were able to pull all their findings together and

voila! There was the light! He got the credit, as he should, but they all made contributions, without

which there would have been no light.


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Innovation is the life-blood of our being human.


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Innovation is the backbone of civilization. It is the only creator of progress.


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Over the last twenty thousand years, the process of innovation has created the world as we know it, and will continue to re-create the world of humans for all the foreseeable

years to come. Innovation is the backbone of civilization. Without it, we would be nothing.


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Steel wool had been around for a long time. Someone added soap, gave it to the housewives

as a new type of scrubbing pad, and made a million dollars. Someone added ridges to the

wire paper clip and made another million bucks. You know the stories and they’re all

true. If you want to get ahead and be creative, add something new to your decisions, go beyond

what has always been done.


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There is nothing magical about creativity. It is practical common sense applied to the

real and ordinary world.


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Creative decision making is the way progress occurs.


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We exist in a competitive society. One manager makes a few more creative decisions than the

others, and he or she is a genius. One organization fields more creative decisions than

the others and it becomes a leader in the industry… If you want to get ahead, learn how to reach out for that additional idea or fact that will

make your decision creative.


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DECISION-MAKING


The fate of the organization is determined by the sum-total of the decisions made in its

behalf. It can never be greater than those decisions provide, although it can quickly

become less as other poor decisions undermine the good decisions that have

been made.

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Questionable decisions are being made all the time, based on questionable decisions

that were made last week and last year, and far back into history.

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“When in doubt…”, you should pull someone else’s thinking into the equation. What can you lose? Nothing, compared to what you would gain if you found just one

little critical fact that would make a difference.

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Research has shown that half the decisions that are made in big organizations are failures, can’t be implemented, or don’t do the job if they are

put into effect. Mix in politics and religion and a raw thirst for power and self-interest, and the

score is even worse. And these are the decisions which determine how we and our children will

live for the next umpteen years!

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Nothing happens until someone makes a decision. Until someone says, “We’ll do

this,” nothing moves, nothing changes. It’s a basic law of physics. Until some new force

and direction enters into the picture, everything is static and at rest. But there’s

more to it than that…

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There is no progress, no improvement over what has been, unless someone has made a

CREATIVE DECISION. Not just any decision, but one which incorporates new ideas or a new way of viewing old ideas.

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The results of solitary decision making are usually not outstanding, although there are rare exceptions. Decisions made in the secrecy of one

skull are most often forced upon the outside world, implemented by edict, and accompanied by the questionable plaint, “This will really be

good for you and you’ll grow to like it.”

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Events are dictated by decisions, and many, if not most, decisions are pure damn lousy. If we can but plant a seed of dissatisfaction and a glimmer of how to make them better,

we will have contributed a whole heap to our culture and its history.

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All I can say, after forty-four years, working with hundreds of organizations in sixty different

countries, is that I know of only who things about management that are always true, everywhere, at

every level, all the time. The first is “Nothing happens until a decision has been made.” And the second is “If the decision you are making now isn’t

better than the last one you made, you’re in trouble.”

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It’s hard to tell what all the consequences of an act might be, but you owe it to yourself to use all the information you can get to

make the very best decision you can, and at least try to see what undesirable effects it might also create. Perhaps that will lead

you to be a little more careful.

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A decision is like the ignition switch in your car. It starts things. Until it is turned, your

car and your organization consist of a bunch of inanimate parts waiting for the

juice that will bring them alive and let them do what they were intended to do.

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If you are going to spend one hour making a decision, take that same hour and spend it

on being innovative.

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Every decision is a bridge from here to there, from where you are to where you want to be. It follows the same process that is followed by the master engineer:

first, an abstract vision, then the abstract requirements needed to make it so, and finally, the physical acts and

conditions which will translate the vision into a successful entity within the world of reality, that will

satisfy the purpose for which it was conceived.

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Very few bridges collapse because of inadequate design, but a lot of business decisions do. Our

experience suggests to us that two-thirds or more of the decisions made by management are not

nearly as good as they could be. Why? Because managers don’t have to be as careful as bridge

builders and the results aren’t so visible.

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It should be a rarity that a business decision fails, not that half or more of them

go silently down the tube.

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…we have found that most decisions that fail, do so because vital information, readily available to the decision maker, was ignored

and not used.

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In almost every case, business decisions fail because the truth of the reality situation

has not been fully understood by the decision maker.

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If you are a manager, and want to get from here to there, build a decision bridge that is complete, stout, easy to implement, and will

be serviceable for a long time.

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A decision is good if it lays out a clear course of action that is consistent with the

reality within which we exist and moves our interests forward. That is to say, it works.

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Managers who make good decisions, time after time, anticipate the kinds or

categories of information they will need, before they ever try to formulate

alternative actions.

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If you want to make a decision which will be used and will last, make a creative one

that incorporates the best thinking of your informed, key people.

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“Nobody told me,” is a hell of a poor excuse for having a decision fail, just as “I didn’t know it was loaded” is a weak reason for

having an unexpected problem or consequence come up after a decision has been made, although they are put forward

time after time.

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Decision making is THE critical act of management. It is the start of all action,

good, bad, and indifferent.

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CREATIVE DECISION MAKING: It took the opening up of our thinking, and the interchange of our information, and the combination of our thoughts to create this

new and better process.

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Looking back, in my forty-plus years of experience, I am not aware of ANY decision

that has broken through to new ground without the help of new information

supplied by new sources.

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Every decision that comes your way is an opportunity to improve what you are doing,

to make some progress, however large or small.

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Every decision you make must be a creative decision or you’re cheating your

organization and throwing away an opportunity that will never come again.

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A decision is the product of many separate judgments, arranged in a logical sequence,

each step contributing to the next. A creative decision is one that reaches out at certain steps, for additional information

that would otherwise be missed if an extra effort were not made to pull it in.

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Every decision requires a clearly defined objective, and every decision can only move forward if specific requirements or criteria

are delivered from that objective so a judgment can be made as to which

alternative best does the job.

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If decision making is THE critical act of management, upon which all else depends -

and we say it is - then equipping your people to reach out beyond the ordinary is

the wisest investment you can make.

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By reaching out to others who might well know something we don’t know, and

opening up the thinking of the decision makers to new data and new ideas, at

certain critical points in the process, we have made it possible for entirely new

solutions to emerge.

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No decision is complete until a plan for its implementation has been made. It must be

practical, workable, or it’s just words.

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The state of the organization exactly reflects the ability of its decision makers.

They make it what it is and what it will or can ever be. So if you want to improve the organization, improve its decision making.

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Think what might happen if every decision that is made, and every problem that is

solved, reached out in such a way for the new and better result? I don’t know what it

would be like, but I’d like to find out.

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PROBLEM SOLVING


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…if you don’t establish trust with your people and ask the right questions, the

cause of your problem may forever remain a mystery.

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I suppose there are problems and decisions that are dead ends. There is no answer, no

solution, no action is possible. I can only say I have never met such a situation. There has

always been some forward motion, some progress toward a better resolution.

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All that was necessary was to bring these informed people together and get them to

thinking in concert about the same thing. The power of their combined knowledge solved the

problem in half an hour. Of course, if these people had been invited to make inputs to the plan in the first place, all this flap would have

been avoided…

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Debugging must draw upon the knowledge of the people who live with those bugs and conditions every day of their working lives.

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You visualize the ideal outcome. You visualize the ideal solution to your problem in detail, as it would be when in place: what it will look like, what it will do for you and your organization, what it will have to be in

order to achieve your purpose. This ideal result is your target.

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You reach out by expanding your view of the possibilities. If you go to the same old

sources and get the same old facts, you will produce the same old answers.

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When there’s a leak in the boat, the first priority should be to stop it. When an

organization is bleeding effort, money, and opportunities wasted because of

questionable decision making, perhaps it’s time to upgrade and modernize the abilities

of its managers.

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Ask questions, search the information out. Someone knows something that you don’t, otherwise you’d have solved the problem

long ago.

If you don’t reach out, you’ll never know.

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COLLABORATION


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The knowledge and information about how to make the information more practical and simple and what bugs to expect are held by

those people to the level at which the actions will be implemented.

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We teach that decision makers should reach out for the inputs of others, because the body of relevant information is too large

and complex for any one or two persons to have it all. If any doctrine can be taken as true and invariable, in my judgment and

experience, it is this.

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No one knows everything there is to know, no matter how much of a genius he or she is. Everyone has to learn, from infancy on

up, bringing in knowledge from the outside. It can’t come from any other place, can it?

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You get the task, reach out for relevant information and experience; you give it room and

freedom to be expressed, understood, and combine with other ideas; you narrow down to the most feasible, then you guide them through the steps that will allow them to put their ideas

into a streamlined practical action.

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Most managers have resident values and concepts like these:

• I am the leader. Don’t nobody challenge what I say. If I said it, it’s law!

• I know more than you do. That’s why they pay me big bucks!

• It’s a sign of major weakness to accept what someone lower on the corporate ladder says is right, particularly if I think somewhat differently.

• My colleagues will think I’m an undignified wimp if I go around asking for advice from people who aren’t in their league.

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Most of what we know about working with other people we learned in our play with

other children.

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Humans dislike having actions forced on them when they don’t understand how or why they have come about. They feel they

have been left out, that their needs and valid experience have been ignored, and

that there is some ulterior motive that has occasioned the secrecy.

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Talk without a structure or process to follow is rambling chit-chat. It has no place

to go because no pathways have been marked out for it.

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It all boils down to this: outstanding managers are quickly able to get their

people to collaborate, to think and work together in a parallel fashion, so they can

benefit from the experience and knowledge of their best informed colleagues.

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Thinking together, using all the brainpower available and all the experience gathered over the years makes more sense than continuing to

rely upon the trial and error method of putting people together and hoping that

something good will come from it.

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We can consciously create the conditions and skills of collaboration. And when we

do, we help create better managers who can make better decisions and find better

answers to the questions that face us all.

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The knowledge of others is a blessing, an untapped, underutilized resource that is

asking to be contributed. Take it. Explore it. Mine it for the help it can give you. It’s

free and it works!

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You don’t have to know everything yourself. You only have to know HOW to

reach out for the new ideas, new techniques, and new relationships, in order to produce a better decision. Once you know how, you

can be creative every time you turn around.

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If a stalemate exists, it is because the needed information is not available and can’t be

supplied by the sources that have been tapped. There is a need to shuffle the deck, bring in new people who have had different experiences and

know some item of information that has not been considered before.

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DIVERGENT-CONVERGENT THINKING


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The dynamics of thinking, logic, wisdom from experience, and the ability to diverge to find new ideas, and converge to put them

all together in a practical way, apply equally to the individual and to the

individual working with other people.

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By integrating divergent-convergent thinking into the problem solving, decision making process, I believe we have found a

way to insert creativity into decision making.

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The process is simple: Open up to new ideas, combine them, narrow down to what will work in the real world. Then refine it,

fine-tune it, remove the barriers to its success.

Divergent, convergent.

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If there are new experiences to be had, this process will uncover them. Not that much uncovering is needed; they will flow out as

though under hydraulic pressure. The people who have new information want to

share it, want it to be recognized and understood. New ideas will burst out if you

give them a chance. And this creative process does just that.

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OTHER STORIES AND WISE WORDS…


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Nothing that a human being makes or perceives is ever perfect. We all make mistakes.

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Then, sitting in a bar and thinking over my misspent life, I came to the startling conclusion that all the

wondrous decisions and problem solutions I had led others to, wasn’t because I was all that smart but rather because I had the right people there, who

knew the stuff that was needed, and asked the process questions that would get them all thinking

about the same thing at the same time. I made them reach out and stretch their brains. Voila!

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Reminds me of the time I was poled up a river in Fiji in a dugout canoe by a man in

his late twenties, seven feet tall and four feet wide, wearing a skirt and weight at least 295 pounds, singing in a high falsetto like

he was a 10-year-old from the Vienna Boys Choir. Look straight ahead, Kepner, and

don’t smile. Remember his pappy ate people like you.

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Everything works out if you wait long enough. Sooner or later, the opportunity

for a big move forward comes along. If you are ready, alert, and willing to go, sooner or

later you will get the propitious chance.

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Don’t talk or write unless you have something to say. If this dictum had been followed since the birth of the alphabet some 6,000 years ago, think how much

further along we’d be!

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‘Knowledge is power,’ they say. If you know the important things before you act, you are

in control…period.

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Few things happen that have never happened before, that cannot be fore-

shadowed by a recollection and understanding by someone, of what has

happened in the past.

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To understand an event – past, present, or future – you must find the tracks that exist from this or similar events and interpret

them, and so reconstruct the message about what has taken place or is about to.

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The old folks used to say that cream rises to the top. It does, although sometimes it is

slower than you would like. But excellence in managing will be recognized.

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If you aren’t moving forward, you’re moving backward, because your

competition is always trying to get ahead of you.

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Most progress comes by tiny increments, little steps one after another. The first airplane we saw up close and got a ride in was a World War 1 Jenny, built in

1917, two open cockpits in a bi-winged contraption of wood and fabric and wire. The last time we flew

across the Atlantic was in a Boeing 777, representing 85 years of progress. Not in a huge leap from Jenny to 777, but a series of millions of little improvements

to the craft and knowledge of aeronautics.

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…if we make it too clear and easy, people won’t think we’re professionals or that

we’re teaching anything important. Pride and ego! But if it turns out to be more

useful… maybe they’d remember us for something even more outstanding than our

professionalism and lofty gobbledegook.

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