BREAKING THE MOULD:NEW IDEAS FROM JOHN SEELY BROWN

I first heard the name John Seely Brown during the Marketing Conference I attended two weeks ago. The CEO of Ayala Land, Rene Almendras, cited JSB as one of his inspirations for instituting innovation in his organization. For example, at Ayala Land they encouraged people to band together based on common interests (e.g. photography, sports,or even drinking beer.) These "communities" helped break down barriers within the company and made working together easier. Why? Because they could relate with each other in an interpersonal rather than a functional manner. Trust levels were higher.

So I read JSB's works on the internet and I was fascinated by his ideas, not because they were new but because they were common sense...and obvious! And since he headed the PARC (Xerox's renowned Research center) he had experience to back his words up.

Among the ideas he put forth I was sold on developing communities of collaboration to increase the learning curve of organizations.

If I were to use Chowking as an example of the typical organization, the traditional approach is to rely on a Training Department to take care of implementing programs or conducting training to make sure its workforce is knowledgeable. It assumes that this central department is the seat of all learning and can best respond to the needs of the people in the work place.

But the reality is different. The people in our stores don't really learn because of all the training we provide. At best what they probably get is basic information and skill demonstration. All other learning they get by asking other people on the job.

I'm pretty sure that even if we have provided our cooks with manuals and training guides,they probably resorted to asking their fellow cooks for information when they needed to get something done.

So maybe what we ought to do is exploit this natural tendency of people to share information to speed up the learning process. If we could encourage collaboration, sharing of best practices more, then Chowking will probably be ahead of others in its ability to learn.

This just brought to mind a situation we had recently with a product, Yang Chow.

During the pilot test the feedback was that the rice tasted bland inspite of the many ingredients. This was because R&D, in the effort to "idiot-proof"the operations, had prescribed a specific amount of rice seasoning similar to that used in our Garlic Fried Rice.

One of our trainers,Choi Palermo, pointed out that this did not seem right because the amount of ingredients in Yang Chow would easily neutralize the taste of the seasoning. But since he was not R&D, he did not get a hearing. The functional unit's expertise had prevailed. If only he had been listened to, then we would not have had the problem in the first place.

JSB's thinking might seem revolutionary but he also is cautious about going overboard. He says that there must be a balance somewhere.