Innovation and Control
The term “innovation” has been a buzzword for over a decade, so much so that Wired recently ran a piece titled, “Innovation: The Most Important and Overused Word in America.” What do CEOs claim their company needs? Innovation! What do education administrators value more than anything else in their teachers? Innovation! Why do tech companies like Apple release new iterations of products year after year? Innovation!
There’s a reason this word is so loved. Remember those giant, clunky cell phones of the 90s? What if the first cell phone companies, instead of continually trying to improve their product, said, “Nah, good enough”? What if the first auto manufacturers stopped at the Model T? What if pharmaceutical companies figured one type of antibiotic was good enough? Innovation—defined by Merriam-Webster as “a new idea, method, or device”—is a necessary component of human life and human improvement.
So what exactly is innovation? According to the Wired article, it is not one thing, but rather should describe a series of human behaviors. “Specifically,” says the article, “we need people to possess a series of thinking skills and behavioral traits that result in their ability to discover, develop, and test ideas and solutions that will result in positive changes not only in their prospective fields but also in their daily lives.” Innovation, in this telling, is not a final product, but rather a process.
At FamilyWorks, we have adopted “innovation” as one of our core values, represented in our logo in the lower left-hand side. The band rises from the lower left to the upper right—symbolizing progress, evolution, ascension to new and better processes and behaviors. For us, innovation is about taking some of the best ideas from the worlds of psychology, business, systems theory, academia, and others and applying them to the family setting. Innovation is using tech tools to implement new systems and new practices in your family.
An example: A few years back, best-selling author Bruce Feiler gave a hugely popular TED talk on “Agile Programming for your Family.” “Agile” is a software development concept, a method for implementing collaboration, adaptive planning, and continual improvement. Feiler interviewed a family who translated agile practices into their family environment, specifically their getting-to-school routine in the morning, and then broke down the steps for other families to emulate. By simply adopting a checklist, this particular family was able to reduce stress, yelling, and lateness in their morning routine, and slashed the time needed to get ready. This is a great example of innovation in the family environment, and of what we want your family to be able to accomplish.
But to really and truly innovate well, families also need to rid themselves of the noise, to establish space and time to establish new systems. In other words, families need a sense of control over their daily lives. This is why “control” is the fourth value in the FamilyWorks logo, represented in the lower right-hand corner by the two concentric circles. The inner circle represents chaos, room for improvement. The outer circle represents the bounds containing and taming such chaos.
Chaos is best defined as “a state of utter confusion”—sounds familiar, right? Families face a lot of chaos. The rush to get out the door in the morning, to get homework done in the evening, to get a meal on the table for dinner. The balancing act of kids’ activities and education with adults’ careers and desires. We tend to think that technology has made this all more confusing—too many people tapped into different devices, living their own realities online without family involvement. And left unchecked, tech can certainly amplify the chaos. But tech is just a tool, and what if it could instead be used to harness the chaos? What if you could use your smartphone to tap in with your family members, to engage them in taking control of the chaos and in innovating new best practices to achieve real, solid goals that you’ve agreed upon together? What if tech can be a tool to help bring you together?
At FamilyWorks, we are working on just such a tool, and we hope you’ll join us in the journey to greater innovation and control in your own family.