The Toolkit for Innovation With Duncan Wardle

0:00The one where I got arrested was - Oh, you're confessing. Okay, let's hear it.

0:08What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change. I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

0:43All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of TruthWorks. You know what? We're having technical difficulties today, and so Patty can't join. That's unfortunate because I'm sure she would have been really excited to talk to this guest. And we have Duncan Wardle. What is so cool about Duncan is that he spent over 30 years of head of innovation at Disney and has created some of the most iconic experiences and characters that we can all just love. So, Duncan, one of the things that I'm excited to talk to you about, which I know you spread the gospel all over the world about, is innovation.

1:22You were yourself part of some of the most innovative experiences that Disney had as an organization. But you go around and help organizations think about how to infuse innovation into their organizations. So before we get into all of that, tell me about you and what you have done in your career, but also what you're doing now. so yeah 30 years on yes i finished as head of innovation and creativity at disney pixar marvel lucasfilm didn't start that way i started as a coffee boy in the london office i used to go and get my boss six cappuccinos a day from bar italian on frith street and about three weeks into the role i was told i would be the character coordinator that's the person looks after the walk-around characters at the royal premiere who framed roger rabbit in the presence of wales diana i was like what do i do they said will you just stand at the bottom of the steps the princess of whales will come in along the receiving line or the rabbit will come down the stairs shall either greet him or shall blow him off and move into the auditorium.

2:18How could you possibly screw that up? Well, that's the day when I found out what a contingency plan was because I didn't have one. But a contingency plan would tell you if you're going to bring a very tall rabbit with a very long feet down a giant staircase towards the princess of whales one might want to measure the width of the steps through which the rabbit has to come down. Trips on the top step is now hurting like a bullet hurt over feet at torpedo speed down the stairs towards Diana's head whereupon he was taken out by two royal protection officers who just flattened him back against the stairs a very famous picture of reuters of roger going back through the air like this two angry guys in suits diving towards him and a 21 year old pr guy from disney in the background oh shit i'm fired so i got a call from a place called burbank that i'd never heard of from somebody called a cmo had no idea what that was i thought i was going to tell me i'm fired and all i had was that was great publicity was that who knew i could build a career out of this and so basically for the first 20 years, I got to have some of the more mad, audacious, outrageous ideas.

3:13And then about 10 years ago, I got a call from our CEO who said, listen, you're the guy with all the mad, big, audacious ideas who seems to get them done inside a very large corporate enterprise. You're going to be in charge of innovation and creativity, to which my exact response was, what the hell is that? Well, I don't know. We just want to embed a culture of innovation and creativity into everybody's DNA. So the first thing I did was survey 5 ,000 people across the organization, ask them what were the biggest barriers to being more innovative and creative where they were. Number one, don't have time to think.

3:41Number two, we don't have the resources. Number three, we say we're consumer and client-centric, but we're measured by quarterly results. Number four, our ideas seem to get stuck, diluted, or killed as they move through our processes. And number five, we all seem to have a different definition of creativity. So I tried four models. Model number one, I hired an outside consultancy who were an expert in innovation and said, make me look good. You kind of. Model number two, we'll create this innovation team. Duncan will be in charge. What could possibly go wrong? When you create an innovation team, you've subliminally just told everybody else in the organization they don't have to.

4:17Right. That model number three was an accelerator program, but we had failed in Bob's overall goal, which was how might we embed a culture of innovation in creativity into everybody's DNA? So I set out to create a toolkit that has three principles. It takes the intimidation out of innovation and makes it more accessible to normal, hardworking, busy people. Makes creativity tangible for people who are uncomfortable with ambiguity. Far more importantly, make it fun. Give people tools they choose to use when the boss isn't around. That's when you know you're changing your culture. We ended up with a three and a half year wait list for what was a two day voluntary training program.

4:51So you kind of figured we were doing something right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to talk about the first sort of principle of the toolkit, which is the intimidation. Because I think, you know, when you say be innovative, when you say, you know, hey, go innovate something, that seems so scary for many people, right? So here's the thing. We train our lawyers, they go to law school. Our IT team, they learn coding at IT university. Our sales people, they get sales training. Marketing, they get marketing training. Engineers, they go to engineering school. Innovation, brainstorming, oh, just get in the room and have a big idea.

5:24Yeah, great. Well done. With no tools to do the job. And so it's ridiculous. And so I've created essentially what I call a toolkit. So let me ask you a question. When you see a business book in your office, where is it? In the bookshelf. Yeah, exactly. Have we ever read it? Of course not. Why? Because my boss needs this by two o 'clock. I've got a weekly report due. So I thought, okay, what non-business book have I ever read where I can get exactly what I need today, a full set of instructions off one page and not have to really read the rest of the book today. I thought, my mum's cookbook. You want Sherry's Trifle?

5:55Go to page 27. You want Shepherd's Pie? Go to page 64. So the book's designed the same way. So the contents page says, have you ever been to a brainstorm where nothing ever happened? Go to page 42. Work in a heavily regulated industry? Go to page 37. And it's designed for, here's the thing, books are boring. Let's not lie about it. Books are boring. So let me try. Don't tell my son that. Well, but they don't have to be, right? Turn it into an experience. So close your eyes. how many days are there in september 30 okay keep your eyes closed i want you to think about how you knew the answer to that question how did you know get eyes closed because you won't remember otherwise how did you know there were 30 days in september how did you learn what can you remember learning or what can you see with your eyes closed right now i can see a calendar there you go you can open your eyes 30 of an audience will do this 30 days has september blah blah blah and november they've just told me they're auditory learners how do i know that because they learned it when they were six how they remember it because they heard it you ever seen anybody count their knuckles january february march april may june july yeah they're kinesthetic learners they learn by doing they were taught the rhyme but they don't remember it that's not how they remember and then 40 of the audience are you um you learn by seeing um that you saw the calendar so i've designed this book the same way so it has little qr codes in each chapter a Spotify playlist for people who learn by listening.

7:19Animated videos. I am now an animated character with Nova. She's female. She introduced you to the innovation tools. Zing is gender neutral, introduces you to the energizers, and Spark is masculine. He introduced you to the creative behaviors. And then on the back cover, I believe it's the first. I don't know factually that it is the first because I haven't fact checked it, but I haven't seen another one. First ever fully integrated artificial intelligence book. So for the kinesthetic learners, you can scan the QR code on the back and ask it how to use the tool on pay 67 to sell more cups of coffee in the state of Pennsylvania on January the 13th.

7:54And the book will answer you. Make it fun. Make it engaging. And then people will use it. I don't want people to buy it and not use it. That's a waste of time. Right. I agree. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, maybe what you experienced at Disney and other organizations that you've helped. Like, why does innovation get stifled? When you were born, you were a child and you were full of playfulness, imagination, curiosity, empathy, intuition. And by the time you finish going through school, 98 % of people identify as not being creative and don't know how to innovate. Here's the problem.

8:30The leadership team in any organization. It's not the biggest barrier to innovation is not I don't have time to think. The biggest barrier to innovation is our own river of thinking. Well, what's a river of thinking? A river of thinking is our own expertise and our own experience. the more we have in the industry in which we work, the wider, the faster, the deeper is our own river of thinking, allowing us to make quick and informed decisions. But hey, guess what? In the last four years, we've had a global pandemic, climate change, Generation Z, not a chance. They're working for corporate America.

8:58Thanks very much. It doesn't matter how big you are as a company. Generation Z chooses to not work for you. You could have a real issue in the next 10 years. Oh, and here comes AI. We don't get to think the way we thought four years ago. We must think differently. And so that's what the toolkit does. Here's what I think is the biggest power. The more expertise we have, the more reasons we know why the new idea won't work. So we constantly shoot it down. The most common phrases we hear is, we tried that last year. That's not a strategic brand fit. That won't hit our KPIs. No, because that's not the way we do it here.

9:27So here's an exercise you could try with your bosses. So let's try this. So Jessica, we've got$100 ,000 in our budget for a birthday party. It could be Star Wars or Harry Potter. What would you like our birthday party to be? Harry Potter. Okay, I'm going to come at you with some ideas for a Harry Potter birthday party. I'd like you to start each and every response with the words you know you hear every day at work. No, because. Those will be the first two words you use in each response, and then you'll tell me why not. So I was thinking, right, come into your house, put a sorting hat outside the front door.

9:57All the good people get the Gryffindor party, but all the bad people get the dark, mysterious Slytherin party. No, because we can't do that. We can't have two different experiences. Okay. Oh, well then, so no, we'll take your kitchen and we'll stretch it. We'll just knock a hole in the wall, right? And create an amazing stretching dining room with the floating candles that come down. Oh, you can't get a hole in them. Yeah. No, no holes. Use no because, if you would. No because. Okay. And then, oh, I tell you what then, we'll have a magic potions room, right? Where we all get some amazing cocktail that turns into something totally freaky.

10:26No, because I don't like cocktails. Oh, I tell you what then, we'll give everybody a broomstick and they go running around your back garden playing Quidditch. No, because I don't want anybody in the backyard. Right. Cosplay party? No, because I don't like those. Okay. How about we just, we'll show the movies and give everybody some Coca-Cola and popcorn? No, nobody likes popcorn and Coke together. So we'll stop there. Do you think our idea was getting bigger or smaller as it was going? Which way was it heading? Smaller. Smaller. And how do you feel when somebody's constantly no-becausing you? Terrible.

10:58I didn't like doing it to you. It felt awkward. It's called business as usual, by the way. So now we're going to do it again. Are you comfortable with doing a Star Wars party? Yes, because my son, by the way, I was on a business trip a couple weeks ago, and my husband introduced our five-year-old to Star Wars, and now he's a Star Wars big, huge fan. It's all about Star Wars. Well, we're going to do another exercise. You'll start with the words yes and instead of no because. Each time you respond, the first two words you'll use are yes and, and then you'll give me an idea back. Okay? Okay. Okay.

11:35Yeah. So I was thinking, right, we could actually take your kitchen and turn it into the Death Star Canteen and we could have food and Hoth and we'll have an intergalactic food and wine festival with food and wine from Hoth and Naboo and Tatooine and lightsabers glow in the dark. Yes. And can we have lightsabers? Yes. Oh, yes. And they could be glow in the dark lightsabers full of our favourite alcoholic liquid. Oh, yes. And can we have really crazy hors d 'oeuvres? Oh, yes. And each of the different hors d 'oeuvres could come from a different planet. And we'll have waiters and waitresses from Hoth and the Boo and Tatooine.

12:09It'll be amazing. Oh, yes. And can we have an experience where you feel like you're immersed more into the world? Yes. And we can have a cosplay party. So everyone can come dressed as their favorite character. And we can actually have the cantina band. So we'll create a fully immersive experience. Oh, yeah. I was going to guess. And can we have the music? So we'll stop there. Yeah. This time around was our idea getting bigger or smaller. Bigger. Far more importantly, we have clients, we have constituents, we have bosses, we have colleagues to bring on board with our idea. By the time we just finished building that idea together, whose idea was it by the time we finished?

12:43About the bars. Ours. Two very simple words from the world of improv that can take a small idea and turn it into a big one really, really, really quickly. But far more importantly, transfer the power of my idea, which never goes anywhere inside a large organization, to our idea and accelerates its opportunity to get done. The challenge for a leadership team is the first two words out of their mouth are no because. If you take nothing away from today's podcast, don't let the words no because be the first two words out of your mouth when somebody comes at you with a new idea. Innovation is about getting you to an idea you can't have by yourself.

13:14And that person may have genius two days from now, two weeks from now. If the first two words out of your mouth are no because, they're not coming back. Yeah, I get it. So talk to me a little bit about what I experienced at Netflix. And we were actually pretty good at trying to avoid these things, but not completely. You know, we certainly had the we tried that before we tested that before it didn't work. And that just drove me crazy. But a lot of organizations and you talked about leadership, like even if they do this and they ask the questions, they can't really figure out how to make it happen.

13:49Right. And make it part of the culture. So, yes, you can use the toolkit and, yes, you can get leadership involved. But what if there's just always resistance? Well, so the thing is, if the senior leaders won't go through the training, then don't bother giving it to the rest of the organization. That's the problem. The senior leaders come in at the beginning of the workshop and they say, everybody, innovation is really important to this organization. Enjoy the workshop. And then they leave. And the message they just sent to the entire organization is my emails are more important than innovation.

14:21If the senior leaders aren't prepared to go through the training, don't bother doing it. It's a total waste of time because you have to have their buy-in. At Disney, Steve Jobs went through the training at Pixar. Right. George Lucas went through the training at Lucasfilms. If you don't have the most senior leaders buy-in, it's pointless. Yeah. It's another shiny penny. But again, if you give people tools that are fun, they'll use them when the boss isn't around. And so all I've done is taken a traditional design thinking innovation process and made it fun. That's the only difference. And so people use it.

14:55That's all you want them to do. Right. I guess in your experience, too, there's a lot of failure with innovation, right? So you're going to try things. They're not going to work. Do you see that as part of the problem that, you know? I think you have to be very careful about how you signal what it is. I think if we call them pilots and you have a pilot fund for pilot programs and you have to agree that there will be a certain percentage of failures, fail first act in learning. So, you know, prototyping, Dyson made over a hundred, I think he made over, what was it? I can't remember. I think it was 5 ,000 prototypes of the Dyson vacuum cleaner before he actually put it on the market.

15:35So he failed 4 ,999 times and guess how much money he's made since? Then look at Richard Branson, right virgin cola that virgin cola does not exist anymore virgin vodka does not exist anymore massages virgin the amount of products that richard branson has launched in his career right that don't exist anymore far far outnumber the ones that do but look at the ones that do virgin cruise line just in the market shaking things up completely virgin i heard i heard some interesting things about these cruises i went on one so not considered an unsuccessful person. And by the way, but part of it is because Branson is one of the very few, and there's probably less than a dozen CEOs who actually believe it's employee first.

16:18I don't care what CEO says it. They don't believe in it and they don't invest in it. They always think it's customer first. And I think in certain industries, that's totally relevant. But in hospitality, in transportation, in entertainment, you get the employees right. And they're the ones who touch your guests eight hours a day, not you. But most companies don't believe it. Branson does, and he walks it every single day. And by the way, you've never heard Richard Branson described as a CEO. Everybody always calls him an entrepreneur. No, he's not. He's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.

16:47But he just, yeah, he's a good guy. I will consider him my mentor. I love him because he's not afraid to try something and fail. Right. And do you think that, you know, we talk about fear a lot on this show and how fear just holds you back in doing the impossible, Right. And so it's... Oh, now. But take the word impossible, right? Now separate. Separate it and put an apostrophe in between the I and the M. And what have you got? Impossible. There you go. Look at that. So there's a tool called... There's a brilliant... It's just how might we reframe a challenge to stop people thinking the same way and give them permission to think differently?

17:30It was created by Walt. When he opened the parks at Disneyland, he said, we will not have any customers in our park. We will only have guests. We will not have any employees. We'll only have cast members. And that simple re-expression of the relationship between the employee and the customer as the cast member, the guest, Walter created a culture of hospitality that's rarely been repeated elsewhere. Now, if I were coming to your hometown, Jessica, where are you, by the way? I'm in Bernie, Texas. Bernie, Texas. I have no idea where that is, but okay. I know it's in the middle somewhere. If I were coming to Bernie, Texas, and you and I were going to open a car wash together, Tell me if you would three or four absolutely essential ingredients we must have in a car wash.

18:07Water. Water. Soap. Soap. Brushes. Brushes. That's three. Do you need more? Yeah, come on, girl. You've got more than three. Dryer. A dryer. Water, soap, brushes, dryer. Okay. So abandon that idea. We are now venture capitalists. We've been invited to open a new brand of auto spas. Who are a spa? Now, close your eyes. What have you seen in a spa? What would you like to have in your spa? What do you want? Well, I would like a massager. Okay. A massage. What else? To smell really great. Aromatherapy, aroma essential oils. What else? I want it to be very clean and beautiful. Clean. Okay. So I said car wash.

18:46You said water, soap, brushes, dry, vacuum. I call it an auto spa. Suddenly we've got masseuse essential oils. So which one would you rather go to? The prettier, more better smelling one. If we'd started by asking the question, how might we make more money in 2011, we'd have put the gate price up at Walt Disney World by 3%. You don't get to iterate in a post-pandemic world. So instead of saying, how might we make more money, we said, how might we solve the biggest consumer pain point? Everybody knew what it was. It was called standing a line. So I said, what if there were no lines? Didn't know the answer at the time.

19:16And we looked outside of our industry for an insight for innovation. Most of the big insights for innovation will not come from looking within your own industry. and we found a very small pharmacy in Tokyo, Japan, using RFID technology to enable people not to stand in line when they came to pick up their prescriptions. All we did was put an RFID chip in a little band, called it Disney's Magic Band. It comes in white or gray in the mail. Why? Because you're like great at the Star Wars edition. Does it come with matching merchandise? Of course it does. This is your room key today. You haven't checked in or checked out of a Florida hotel in seven years.

19:45This is your theme park ticket. Turnstiles? What turnstiles? They went away six years ago. Reservations if your favorite character meet or greets, favorite rides. You can pay for merchandise with it and have it sent to your hotel room or your house. You can save your food on your smartphone and walk into the restaurant when you want to walk in, sit at the table you want to sit at and have the food come fresh to you. Hadn't we started by saying, how might we make more money? We're going to make 3%. But by reversing it from the consumer's point of view and asking, how might we solve the biggest consumer pain point?

20:11The average guest at Walt Disney World today has two hours free time each and every day they didn't have six years ago. What has that resulted in? Record intent to recommend, record intent to return. And what is it you do with your free time in Disney theme parks? I guess you go to the restaurants. You spend money, darling. You shop, yes, you shop. Biggest single revenue generating idea Disney ever created. Yeah, I bet. Oh, my gosh. By not asking how might we make more money. Well, I think I was just going to ask you to tell a good story, and that is a good story of innovation. What was another great story of, you know, maybe something that failed at first at Disney that you were trying in the innovation team, and then it finally worked.

20:50Oh God, too many to mention. I'm sure. Yeah, no, but again, you just, you have to have a budget set aside for pilot projects and you have to accept there's going to be a percentage of acceptance and a percentage of failure. If you don't have that, there's too much fear and people won't do it. Right. But again, I think it's, the other one is, let me ask you a question, Jessica. Were you ever, hands up, if you were ever invited to a brainstorm at Netflix where nothing ever happened as a result of the brainstorm. Yeah. Right. Hands up, safe in the knowledge that if you were invited to another one sometime this year, nothing would happen as a result of the brainstorm.

21:28Here's the problem. We don't teach people how to brainstorm. We just tell them, get in the room and give them a flip chart. That is absolutely useless. We must give people the training to learn how to do it so they can apply it. Right. Okay. But if you're an individual contributor in an organization, what's your advice for that person? Is it to go and have a conversation with leadership? Yeah, listen, it's the naive expert. Well, who or what is a naive expert? And how can they help the rest of the organization? The naive expert is somebody who doesn't know what you're working on. And therefore, they get to ask the silly questions that you're too embarrassed to ask in front of your colleagues.

22:04They go throw out the audacious idea, ungoverned by your river of thinking, your expertise. In the next leadership meeting, I would strongly suggest you have somebody in who's a frontline cast member or a junior cast member, a member of staff. They are not there to solve the challenge for you. But guess what? They've been on touchscreen technology since the day they were born, chat GPT for the last two years, VR since they were five. They think differently and they can help you think differently. So for example, we were designing a new retail dining and entertainment complex at a Hong Kong Disney Resort in the room with the Imagineers.

22:36That's who you would expect. By the way, do you have a pen and a piece of paper? Uh, somewhere. Good. All right. I can get one. I'm going to give you an exercise that I gave the Imagineers that day. Hold on, I have to get it. We had the Imagineers in the room that day. They're the people you would expect to have building a new resort. On that particular day, I was faced with 12 white male American architects and engineers over 50. That's called Groupthink. So I invited into the room, as my naive expert, a young female Chinese chef. Why? Because she was the antithesis of everybody else in the room.

23:04And I gave them the following challenge that I'm going to give you now. I'm going to name an object. you're going to draw it, but you only have seven seconds. Are you ready? Oh, gosh. I have seven seconds. You're ready. You don't have to get time. Here we go. Please draw a house. Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Share your genius. Come on. Let's take a look. Come on. No more drawing. Yep. Let's take a look. Oh, look at that. Twins, baby. We drew one door. We drew two windows. We put bars over our windows. What shapes the roof? It's a triangle. Why? Because all of your river of thinking, your expertise and experience gave us one choice.