Story:
"Soft" R&D: You don't have to be a geeky engineer to experience the thrill of inventing

TANDBERG already had an unusually strong culture high on energy, enthusiasm and evangelical passion for video. Our task was to channel that energy into reinventing how the field works at the speed of or faster than the market. Our ideas evolved considerably over time. Below is a snapshot of our current thinking.

How can a relatively small organization stay ahead of the market when all parts of its business context are on the move: technology is getting more complex with each product release, who buys it and why is changing as technology moves up the adoption curve, competitive landscape is changing as competitors of different breeds and creeds are clamoring to join the growth party, solutions are outgrowing the competence of old partners and require partnerships with new types of organizations… Setting ambitious goals and recycling best practices does not cut it. What constitutes a best practice today, sometimes becomes a dangerous mental lock-in tomorrow. People need an entirely new way to relate to their work, a way that is not defined by the contents of what they do because the contents needs to change and change fast.

So instead of looking at work as, well, “work,” we started looking at it as an infinite game, a martial art that is permanently under development. Every employee is a “Player” in that game which means they have an unconditional responsibility for inventing new “moves” in response to or anticipation of changes in business context. In high tech product R&D no new product release is the end of the game but a stepping stone towards a new, even better or sometimes radically new solution. Engineers are expected to keep inventing, to keep playing. That’s precisely the mindset needed in the field, too. In that sense, engineers are charged with “hard R&D” and the field is charged with “soft R&D.”

The complication with the products of “soft R&D” is that unlike the products of “hard R&D” you can’t touch them, they are intangible: they are mental constructs people use to make sense of what’s going on and to decide on their course of action. But to tinker with something, to improve it, to take it apart and create something new, people need to see it. The good news is, the products of “soft R&D” might be intangible but they are not invisible. So, to jump-start the “soft R&D” game, we need to help the participants of the game see what the current state of the art “product line” looks like.

Here is how we go about it: We pick a role, say channel managers, and gather a number of perspectives on how people in that role think, what they do and the impact they have. We talk to people in that role (the best, the average, the mavericks), to their managers, to people in other roles that interface with channel managers inside TANDBERG and people inside the partner organizations channel managers look after. Based on these conversations—we had around 60 of these in the case of channel managers—we distill what seems to be “the state of the art” of channel management at three levels: (1) assumptions people in that role make about business context, (2) how they conceive of their role, (3) the key “moves” that make up the role. This becomes “TANDBERG Way of Managing Channels” version 1.0. Now we have something to tinker with.

The next step is to architect a process that creates physical and mental space for tinkering. Although lots of incremental improvements are possible in the field, in the heat of the action, the really big breakthroughs tend to happen when people get a chance to put some distance between themselves and the grindstone and reflect on what they are doing. That’s why we created the idea of the "Lab.” The main purpose of the Lab is to tinker with the current version of a “TANDBERG Way of…” If the Lab does not produce product updates or breakthroughs, it’s considered a failure. Here is how the Lab works: Each Lab would consist of 15-20 people in a given role, 1-3 executives, 2-3 senior managers responsible for people in that role and 2 professional facilitators. Participants are usually a mix of people from different geographies. Each Lab lasts 2-3 days. During this time, participants

• First fire-test and revise current assumptions about business context and current conceptions of the role. Here is a sample revision in current assumption about business context: from “Cisco is a giant whose market power dwarfs us “ to “Cisco is our marketing arm! They create a major wave in market awareness about telepresence and we are going to ride it.” Here is a sample revision in the conception of channel manager’s role: from “I am a go-to-person for all partner related business” to “I am a chief strategist and commander-in-chief of joint TANDBERG-partner forces.”
• Then fire-test the current repertoire of “moves.” The best way to do this is by trying out all of the moves—typically each role is distilled into a system of 9-12 moves—in the current context. In the case of channel managers, they would be trying out all the moves in the context of their current partner portfolio and the most important partners. “Trying out” means going through one or several Lab experiments specifically designed for each move. Depending on the move, experiments are done either individually, in a small team or as a whole group. Each experiment is followed by a de-brief and collective reflection on the validity and importance of the move given what’s happening on the ground at the moment. Some moves are discontinued, some moves are upgraded, new moves are introduced. Decisions are made on the spot. Continuity and relevance of the upgrades for the entire community in a given role (and not just for the people participating in the Lab right now) are ensured by the permanent members of the Lab, i.e., executives, senior managers and facilitators.

By the end of the current Lab, the people who are leaving the room are the only ones privy to the latest and greatest upgrades because they are the ones who invented them! So, how do the upgrades get disseminated to the rest? The really big changes—and there have been a few, including changes in overall strategy—are communicated immediately through the line. More subtle revisions are sent as email updates to the community and shared in person as fresh lab participants get back into the field. Everybody can also go to a dedicated website that hosts the most up to date version of a “TANDBERG Way…”

Between Labs, facilitators and content developers incorporate all the revisions and upgrades into the content for the next Lab, so that the next cohort of inventors tinkers and builds on the most recent version. For each role participating in the “soft R&D”, there is about one Lab a month or more, depending on the speed of market changes.

So far, four communities have been setup with the infrastructure to play the “soft R&D” game—leaders, account managers, channel managers and sales engineers (>80% of people outside “hard R&D”). The corresponding tracks are “TANDBERG Ways of Leading,” “TANDBERG Way of Selling,” “TANDBERG Way of Scaling through Partnerships” and “TANDBERG Way of Engineering Growth.” All four tracks have gone through countless revisions, the first three have already gone through major “product line revamps” (the forth track was only brought on-stream a few months ago). And although there are still some roles without a formally developed and centrally managed infrastructure to support the game (i.e., operations and support functions), every single person inside TANDBERG gets an introduction to “Player mindset” through a New Hire Workshop when he/she joins and learns to play the game with or without the supporting infrastructure. In fact, some communities have taken the initiative and have already developed their own “way” without any support from the central team.

New products is not the only thing that the Labs produce. They also produce a tangible surge in focused energy and a new kind of excitement about what was formerly thought of as work. Many organizations talk about empowerment, but in the Labs people delight in what empowerment produces. The personal impact of big decisions made on the spot because of a new idea or a new way of looking at things you volunteered does not wear off easily. Neither does the first-hand experience of meritocracy of ideas. Equipped with a Player mindset, people don’t wait to be invited back into the Lab to volunteer new ideas. After the Lab, “work” is not quite what it used to be. It’s a game of “soft R&D.”