The innovation game

Ryan:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to season two of Inside Insights, a podcast brought to you by Zappi. My name is Ryan Barry. I'm joined by my cohost and good friend, Patricia Montesdeoca. Hello, Patricia.

Patricia:

Well done, Ryan. I love that you roll that off your tongue.

Ryan:

Not bad. And you know today, Patricia is an absolute legend, and she's going to bring a lot of value to this podcast. We've explained that a little bit. We'll talk a little bit more about it, but Patricia, your street cred with your kids now that you're a podcast host, talk about where we're at on a clout level.

Patricia:

Oh my God. If I was like a three before, I'm like a 33 now.

Ryan:

Coolest mom on the block.

Patricia:

I don't even know which is better. Being a co-host or having this mic, this Yeti mic. It's just I've never bought any piece of electronic equipment that's made me cooler in my life. I mean-

Ryan:

It's true. You look cool, you look like a natural, and for those of you who probably know this already, Patricia and I actually don't do a lot of the hard work for this podcast.

Patricia:

No.

Ryan:

So Kelsey Sullivan is the woman behind the scenes who makes this all happen, and we've been creeping her out with our microphones, and Kelsey, I'd just like to thank you for organizing this podcast and forcing me to do it. It's been a lot of fun. Season two, it's all about giving value to you if you work in insights or marketing. There's a lot of podcasts out there that get into success stories of executives. We did some of those episodes last time. This season is going to be technical. It's going to be pragmatic. It's going to be punchy. And the goal of every episode is to teach you something you can to work the very next day. Everybody we're going to interview with somebody who we've learned to respect from their ability to get shit done.

And today, first episode of season two is a great place to start. Today we're going to talk to Cedric Steele. Cedric Steele is the assistant vice president of innovation for Coca-Cola. He works specifically in the McDonald's division. What that means is he helps Coca-Cola grow their business with McDonald's. It's a B2B job. Cedric is...

Patricia:

A beast.

Ryan:

I can say a lot about Cedric.

Patricia:

Cedric is a beast.

Ryan:

He's a good man. He's tough as nails. He pushes his partners hard, but he's loyal. He's kind. He's a sweetheart, and he's smart. We're going to learn, Patricia, a ton about innovation in this session. I cannot wait. Should we just get right into it?

Patricia:

Let's just do it. Let's hear from Cedric.

Ryan:

Without further ado, Cedric Steele.

Ryan:

Today, I have the great pleasure of being joined by Cedric Steele, the Assistant Vice President of Global Innovation at Coca-Cola, the McDonald's Division. An absolute legend in the space of innovation and a great man. Cedric, thanks for taking the time, my friend.

Cedric Steele:

That is too kind. I appreciate it, Ryan. Thank you. It's always a pleasure to speak with you.

Ryan:

Absolutely. Cedric and I were just saying before this that the only excuse we have to hang out is to do a podcast, so it's perfect. I don't get to go to Chicago, he doesn't get to go to Boston. Cedric, I have, my marketing team gave me a really cool microphone, which I'm geeked out about, but the people who are going to be listening to us aren't going to have the benefit of seeing the really high-tech microphone you've got. It's almost like you were prepared for this thing.

Cedric:

Well, it's more like a prop than anything. I just wanted... I didn't want to let you down and then I'd have had mic envy if you had that and I didn't have something, so I kind of went old-school DJ here with the articulating boom.

Ryan:

I like it. Old-school DJ. All right, so we're going to talk about... we're going to talk about innovation today. I'm pumped. Everybody who's going to listen to this, you're about to learn about innovation from somebody who's done it in all different categories and his focus on driving P&L growth is really refreshing. I'm really excited to bring this interview to you. Before we dive in, one of the unique elements about the world you play in now is that you work for the company that is the second most recognizable word in the English language, Coca-Cola, second only to the word "okay," but you work in the service arm of the business. Educate the audience a little bit because people, I think a lot of times, Cedric, people think of Coca-Cola, they think of 20-ounce bottles, fountain sodas. Talk to us a little bit about food service because, obviously, you've got other experiences before coming to Coke on the food service side, but just educate people a little bit around some of the dynamics within the food service industry.

Cedric:

Yeah. I really have had just a fabulous ride since joining Coke and the thing that really I've found great surprise in is just how extensive the Coke brand portfolio is, not only from the retail side, as you mentioned, but on the food service side as well. I think the place that I got the greatest exposure for that, just working... call it with two global multinational companies, has been just the fact that each of those brands basically reach the population of earth if you think about it in terms of scale. You mentioned the recognizability as far as the name, Coca-Cola. You put the brand logos of Coke and you put the brand logo of McDonald's, I mean, they are things that are just universally known around the world.

When you look at food service, I was surprised to know that Coke was in a lot of progressive brands beyond just the fountain drinks that you typically will come to know the company as. Our venturing emerging brands group was created about 10 years ago and they really have just tried to give the Coca-Cola Company entry into a lot of other category spaces. That includes things like Vitamin Water, Suja, we had different relationships like Smart Water, the Minute Maid Juice brands, Simply, there's just a host of brands and many of these, as I'm mentioning and that you might be familiar with in the United States, you'll find many of those have scaled beyond the borders of the US. You'll also find that the company really has I think done a good job under this mantra of "beverages for life," of really trying to make sure that they have a meaningful presence in all beverage categories as it relates to the way that people drink around the world.

Ryan:

That's fantastic. I think the reason I wanted you to unpack it a bit is I think we really don't understand in a macro the business that happens within the businesses we consume from. Coca-Cola being the consumer-facing brand, but also such a strategic partner for the golden arches or other customers that you have within the restaurant space. You've worked at Georgia Pacific, Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, I mean, these are just some of the biggest organizations in the world. Tell me, Cedric. How many innovations have you launched and roughly how much business has come from those innovations over the course of your career, just so people can be grounded in your background and the way that you've made an impact on the businesses you've worked in?

Cedric:

Oh, well. Wow. Great question and actually, nobody's actually asked me that before, so I would say if you literally add up everything, it's probably been about 50 different new product launches, if you will. Many of those have been product lines, which might have three to up to 20 different SKUs associated with each of them. Over the last 10 years or so, I know that it's been at least about $1 and $1.5 billion, but if you look over my broader career, it'd probably be a little closer to about $2.5 billion top line revenue.

Ryan:

Unbelievable. I mean, it's really impressive. Particularly in a world where... I work in a software space and the truth is, the majority of the innovations fail, even though we fancy ourselves "agile." To try to drive incremental revenue and not cannibalize the base is really easy to say, not very easy to do.

Cedric:

That's a good point. I wasn't counting all the failures in there.

Ryan:

All right, let me ask then. How many, of the 50 that have made a lot of money, how many failures did you have? Can you remember any?

Cedric:

Oh, geez.

Ryan:

Or the number, rather?

Cedric:

Well, I'll put it this way. I know the last time that I counted, just for this job that I'm in, when I counted a couple years ago we were at 700+ concepts, so distinct, different new ideas, so you take a lot of swings before you might necessarily get that hit. That's a big reason, I think our partnership together working with Zappi has really been one of those things that I consciously have tried to improve my batting average. Although I'll call it maybe 15 years ago, 10 years ago, I would say my ratio of just raw ideation coming up with lots of different things that I didn't know if they were going to work or not, that was a much wider end of the funnel 15 years ago.

Now, I really have learned quite a bit as far as just trying to refine the focus on where I'm trying to hunt and then, also, as you... I won't call it fail as much, but I'll say as you try more often, as you get more experience under your belt, you get a lot more efficient, agile, in your ability to select things that you feel are going to give you a greater probability for success. That's something that has changed over time with me, whereas before I might have taken a much broader scatter gun type approach to it. Now, I'm getting much more refined in where I want to focus and that enables greater speed. Speed is everything in innovation.

Ryan:

Yeah, speed to market, speed to execution, absolutely. Okay, so there's going to be some people here who are maybe earlier in their career and they might be thinking to themselves, hey, Ryan and Cedric, sounds like you guys have messed up some innovations.

What are some of the learnings? You were saying you've gotten more focused and that's helped you miss less and be faster, but what are some of the key pieces of advice you've picked up in terms of how to innovate in a way that's going to move the financial needles on the business.

Cedric:

Yeah. I guess one of the things I've learned is that ideas are free. You don't need to budget the number of ideas that you have. I think you're always better off the more thought you can put to something and I think at different stages, the more collaboration that you can get from things. I've also learned... and the reason why I say it that way, collaboration at different stages, ideas can often be very fragile things when you think about the corporate environment. By that, what I mean is, often if you're coming up with the new novel approach to something and the culture of the organization isn't ready to receive it, it's almost like when white blood cells get together and they attack. It's like there can often be a strong resistance to new and different.

Often, in that early stage, I'm working with a very closely knit group of like-minded folks that are similarly striving for new ways to get things done. I think as you are able to get greater clarity about what that translates into a business setting, then it lends itself very easily and very well to bring others along the journey and get them onboard with it. That's something I didn't quite understand when I first started out. When I first started out, I would say, "Hey, we had an ideation session. We came up with 50 things. Let's go do 40 of them." And that, I found, was not effective in terms of 1) demonstrating any kind of credibility about knowing what business I'm in and how to take the idea and actually make its way through the organization. And 2) the notion of about resources and return. It doesn't necessarily lend itself to that in a manufacturing environment.

Other environments where it might not be dependent literally upon the machining and the tooling, for example, you mentioned in the software industry, you just have a whole different model versus what you might have in a manufacturing industry. I think the real eye-opener I had, I got to visit one of the teams over in Google just talking about how they think about new products and I asked how many launches they do a year. Right off the bat, it was like, "Oh, at least 250." I was like... because the math of it is like, what, every couple days or so? They're like, "Yeah, that's how we roll. We think it through. We get to a certain part, we try it, and then we move on." You don't really necessarily have that ability to do that in a manufacturing plant necessarily, so what I find there is just trying to make sure that you think the idea through as far as what we'll actually be able to be manufactured and then, in a lot of cases, it's not making what the original thing was intended for. It might be a modification that you change the process or you re-envision what might come out of it. Those are the things that can be really exciting and really turn the industry on its ear.

Ryan:

Really interesting. Have you ever read the book Exponential Organizations?

Cedric:

I have not read that one, no.

Ryan:

I'd recommend it and also to anybody listening. There's something in there around you have a baseline of business, it's a cash machine, it's growing, it's growing, it's growing, and you're trying to come up with sometimes disruptive paths forward to move needles. It talks a lot about something you said, which is this notion of the existing base fights off innovation like it's a virus. In other words, like, oh, "we don't do it this way" or "that's not how our customers buy" or "that's not how things move," and it is one of the main innovators dilemmas, which is it's hard to get the system to actually come onside.

It sounds like through your career you've learned that a little bit, so instead of saying, "I've got 50 things, let's run with 40," it read to me, and I was going to play it back to you and maybe you can say a little bit more, but that you synthesize and get it down to a couple of key things and almost advance the innovation to a point where, hey, not only is it good, it's going to work, here's how it fits. How far do you incubate before you bring it into the system, the sales people, the finance people because to your point, you're not working in an environment where all you need is a Google Maps team and sprint to ship a new feature. You've actually got to make syrups and cups and all different things and get them to different restaurants and stores and so on and so forth. Yeah, say a little bit more about that incubation period because I think it's relevant not just for innovation, Cedric, what you're talking about, it's also change management. If a business needs to plot a new course, you've got to bring the people along, so how are you... I guess how have you mastered that part of your craft?

Cedric:

Yeah. I think that's an excellent point and what I mean in that is recognizing that innovation does not happen without people and in order for people to engage, they have to have a vision of what's in it, not only for the company, but for them personally.

Ryan:

Love that point.

Cedric:

Because one of the things that I find in my role is that often I'm working with a very large cross-functional group that might not necessarily directly report to me. Those groups are often juggling huge backlogs of work that they've got to get done for the company. One of the things that I find is very important as we are thinking about innovation opportunities is thinking about how you can demonstrate that this is going to accelerate the organization's goals. I think one very simple way of doing it that everyone tends to recognize is in terms of profit or at least being able to demonstrate over a certain finite number of years how the idea that you have right now has the potential to scale and then be able to create a larger return for all involved.

If people can't see the vision about where you're going with it, what tends to happen is it goes in the inbox amongst a hundred other different things and then, the speed gets compromised. When your speed gets compromised, all of your return diminishes. People get motivated by, well, how is this going to impact the division and what's my bonus going to be? All of a sudden, I have to go from this flip chart of sticky dot-voting, like in the years past, to creating that into some vision that they can envision, a box rolling off the end of the manufacturing line, and selling and growing. A lot of it has to be you have to take it in different chunks and I found I had to really expand my knowledge about so many different cross-functional areas in order to become effective. I know enough about supply chain to be dangerous. I know enough about manufacturing, I know enough about R&D, I know enough about culinary, and when I say I know enough, I know enough to understand some of the challenges that those groups are going to go through.

What I try and do is create a vision that they can wrap their head around as far as, 1) how we might take advantage of the opportunity, but then 2) it's not only about the opportunity, it's also helping them think through, hey, if we get a roadblock or a hurdle that we've got to navigate, can I help you think about how we can do that together? I think the thing that's different now that I've gotten more longevity and continuity in Coca-Cola and innovation and working with the partners at McDonald's, when I contrast that to early in my career, I was literally moving from one job to another every 12 to 18 months. What comes very tough in that is you don't get a chance to see the business cycles, you don't really understand a lot of the organizational dynamics, so when you think about complexity in Coca-Cola, we've got the Coca-Cola Company, we've got the bottling system, McDonald's has the corporation, they have the owner/operators, they have the various committees, and that's in the United States. Right?

You start to multiply that times multiple countries and it gets very complicated very quickly. What's common in all of that is that you're still dealing with people. At the end of the day, people want to know where do I fit into this, how can I help the vision become bigger, if I do put my hours and my effort into it, what's the return going to look like? Those are basic, universal things that I've found, regardless of where you are on the planet. Those are the types of things that people are interested in. If I put my time and effort into it, what's in it for me and the company? The more that I can get people to see that, then the better we become at actually going from a raw idea to a real concept to a real prototype to, hey, this thing works, let's scale it and get it out as broadly as we can.

I don't think I had that sensitivity when I first started my career.

Ryan:

There's like, we could have a whole interview just unpacking what you just said. I could take this in 10 different directions right now. I'm sort of just like, it's really just a fascinating answer.

The empathy of where other people are coming from and their complexities, in a world where we have to operate in matrices. The business models of the 70s where it was top down, rigid hierarchies, informal divisions, I mean, they don't work for a reason, so as you rightfully say, even a company as big as Coca-Cola, you're having to operate in a matrix and navigate cross functional dependencies. One of the big hacks that you said there is in understanding not only of what the other person is motivated or measured by, but also how their job works. I think what's interesting to me about that is it's at odds with a lot of modern-day workplace culture, which is job hopping oriented.

I mean, I've been in the industry for 15 years and I still am learning stuff. To your point that continuity helps you have the intuition to say, "You know what? John in manufacturing's hot button is this specific issue, so I need to think through that," I mean, that's a master class in change management, my friend. That's really incredible.

I also want to come back to the dot-voting. Dot-voting is something I'm a big proponent of to get inclusive decision making. Unpack how that works. I might even have a different definition of you, but that whole prioritization in dot-voting. Say a little bit more about how you bring that to life within your organization.

Cedric:

I have really found that that has needed to evolve over time because whereas initially in my career, I think it was sufficient just to get an idea in terms of a straw poll where people sat in terms of these ideas that we might come up with at the end of a session. The challenge in it was that we'd have a couple hundred ideas up on the wall and you still end up with a massive amount of possibility.

What I've really liked about the sticky dot-voting was the fact that you gave everyone a voice. It was your chance to take your thoughts to review everybody else's comments and just put your vote, which I think when you think about just democratizing the innovation process, just even people operate differently when they're in an ideation session. Some people are really gregarious, and they really get into being able to come up with the idea. Other people are really good at maybe seeing two or three ideas over there and they can synthesize it and then you got other people who are very good at screening it, like saying this one really has some legs to it. It might work if we do X, Y, and Z to it.

When I say I felt like it needed to evolve over time was the challenge I would run into is you would see an idea that might have four or five votes to it, but the challenge was it was scribbled out in such a fast fashion that you really didn't know how to translate that idea into a business concept. End world hunger. Okay, yeah, who wouldn't want to do that? All right? How do you do it in France? That's a whole another level to it that might have some additional characteristics that you need to consider. Like, what audience are we talking about, what supply chain, what product categories are we dealing with?

As you get beyond just the raw... which I'll call a raw idea for the purpose of this conversation, once you start peeling back the layers of the raw idea, then you're able to get to more of a developed idea that can lead to a concept. Once you start drilling a little bit more deeply in there, what I find is it's not the number of votes that you get, but more the qualitative input as far as the feedback and the opinions of other SME's that can help you figure out actually how to execute that thing.

I'll give you an example. One of the things that I was working on at Georgia Pacific years ago, we were trying to come up with some new ideas for Brawny as far as ways that we could take that brand and move it out of just the paper towel space, but into a broader range of cleaning products. I used a tool at the time called Idea Central. It was basically an online collaboration system. We open it up to all the employees in the company and this one person sent me a really elaborate description of a way that we could take an existing manufacturing line, make a slight change to it, and come out with a totally different product that saved $2 million a year.

This came in, this was maybe the third submission I got out of 150 and it was so good I just picked up the phone, I called the guy, I said, "Well, amazing idea submission. Why did you put all this detail into it? I mean, you really didn't have to do that." What he said was, "You know, I've been telling my boss about this idea for the last six months, but he keeps telling me that's not my job, so I just didn't have anybody else to tell it to until you asked me the question. I've been thinking about it, I got all the ways that we can execute it," and that was the idea we picked up and ran with it. We literally got $2 million right off the bat. I would not have gotten that if I hadn't given that employee the opportunity to voice their input and what was critical was the fact that he was a line worker, those are the people that you don't usually necessarily have in the ideation session.

By that, what I learned was ask people maybe that you don't always ask, ask people that are the closest to the base of knowledge, and give them just some room to be creative.

Ryan:

Honestly... that strikes a chord with me because I view a lot of my job as a leader as to synthesize ideas and to the point of that front line person, who's closer to the business in many ways, the actual friction, the actual day to day stuff. I'd actually did this for our 2021 planning in 2020. I asked everybody, "What should we be working on?" The ideas you get back from people if you're willing to listen are incredible, but it does challenge... I mean, you're obviously able to do it in innovation capacity, but that innovation to me should be fluid, ongoing within organizational structures if we do this right.

Cedric:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

How the hell can somebody who's that passionate about something be told, "You know what? Don't worry. It's not your job." At the end of the day, if they have a vision for something, I think our job as leaders, particularly your job in synthesizing innovation, is to spot that. I think in that business, at that time, that's ahead of its time. I just think that's a really profound insight. Everybody's got good ideas.

Cedric:

The thing is, you hear very similar things just framed up a little differently, even today. "We've got to stay focused on our priorities. Don't do that right now, it's a distraction. That's not our responsibility. "What amazes me is often, time and time again, I see senior management at different places assume that the outside consultant has the answer. They will tend to go to that place versus turning the problem over to the employees and what I see there often is a tremendous expenditure that goes on, not only in terms of just the outflow of money, but the learning curve that it takes for that outside consultant to understand. That's a different thing versus have them get exposed to what you do, having them understand is a very different thing. That requires a lot more I think deeper insight.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Cedric:

Properly harnessed, the employee base that you have, I'll put a bet down every time on the employee base to figure it out what the right motivation, versus somebody from the outside generally just because they invest not only so much time, but they have their livelihoods tied up on it. I think just given the right amount of channeling, you can get just a tremendous amount of greater value out of the employee base.

Ryan:

Yeah. I completely agree. I was just thinking in my head if I was to say, "We need to make Cedric on Zappi more successful." Who knows how to do that more than Bailey? For those of you who don't Bailey, Bailey's Cedric's customer success manager. It isn't going to be some outside consultant and frankly, it isn't going to be me because who's going to be closer to the actual interactions than the person who's on the ground. I have a long pet peeve that I don't know if I've ever talked to you about. It's actually about consultants and the joke that I always make, Cedric, is it always sounds good on the whiteboard. Right?

It's your point of bringing people along. It's like you're doing that because you know that the very simple execution of like, oh, it will work because the consultant or because I said so is a deeply flawed set of logic because John in supply knows that this person in legal has these dependencies. I've brought in the consultant to work on something and I was amazed at how simple it was in their brain to make extreme organizational change.

Cedric:

Yeah. Right.

Ryan:

You know?

Cedric:

You said when you hire people, you think about people that love insights and that's just kind of like a reality that goes onto. What I wanted to say just to build upon that, and it really is this notion about the change or evolution in research the way that I see it right now. I remember it used to be the starting point would be asking, "what do we want to learn, what do we want to know, what do we feel we can gain from doing the research?"

Ryan:

Yep.

Cedric:

I totally ask different questions now. I start with what do I want to do with it, what do I feel would be useful knowledge to make better decisions, and I will only use research partners that I know have the goods in terms of the fundamentals there, but the thing that I really, really, really value is the push and the pull that comes through partnering discussions at a strategic level. You mentioned Bailey. I've got to give a couple other shout outs. Ellen's tremendous, Patricia has been fantastic, and the reason why I turn to people in these roles is because that thought partnership is not something that you can go out and you can easily get from other places, which it really then becomes a function of what is our company's culture and orientation to how we think about insights and research, and then, more importantly, what people do we put there and how empowered are those people?

I really have valued it when I can reach out to Bailey or Ellen or Patricia and say, "Hey, I've got a problem, I need you to help me think it through." Rather than immediately going to, "Here, use this tool," it's like, "Well, let's think about what the plan is. How are we going to use it, what are we going to get out of it?" That's what I get. I get so much more value out of is, is thought partnership that helps me figure out what can I do with what I learn. That's why I really like.

Ryan:

Love it. It was actually a perfectly accidental transition because I was going to say we would talk about where do consumers come in. Actually, you're in my head, man. It's funny, the point you make there around thought partnership, proven growth tactic, by the way, not just the right thing to do. Gartner put out a study that showed the vendors that grow are those that have knowledge, a unique perspective, challenge their customers' thinking and help provide a clear path forward. That narrative, it's one of my favorite data sets I've ever looked at, it flies in the face of "the customer's always right." The customer's probably right, but you're not coming to a company like Zappi or any other partner you have to do something low value. You want help.

I often say to our staff, it's not our customers' job to figure out how to use Zappi. It's our job to make them successful. I think that to me translates to all different types of businesses because even in your business, the end of the day, that innovation you've got to convince McDonald's to then convince the owners and the operators and the franchisees and there's a certain tactic that you need to do and what you're using is all the different levers you've got to provide that perspective. I think that for your perspective as both a buyer and a seller, you're valuing it on one side, as you say, but you're also doing it rather intuitively within your day job.

Cedric:

Yeah. Yeah. That's an excellent point, Ryan. I couldn't agree more. I think that whole notion of the customer's always right is just a dated place to start. By that, what I mean is that the customer, and even I feel like... I feel a little odd using the word, the customer, but I feel like the clients that I deal with are looking to be the very, very best at what they do.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Cedric:

They are not content with complacency, they're not content with doing things the way that they've always done it. They are not content with us bringing an agenda based on what we want to do either. Rather than the phrase of the customer always being right, I feel that the customer always wants to win, and I think their basis for winning is getting really good solutions that their consumers, their guests really find compelling. In order to get to that space, we just have to be curious as hell about what is it that they want and more importantly, how does that need to evolve because the one thing that is real certain is that things are absolutely not static. Even apart from the dynamic of time, you've got this dynamic of just geographical differences.

You take the United States right now, it's like you've got 50 countries in a lot of regards as far as how the local governments may act, what the local attitudes may be, what the local competitive dynamic may be. I mean, certainly there's some commonalities, but I feel like unless you really understand at a granular level what you're dealing with and what's influencing people's lives and their livelihoods, that you really can't claim to be able to know what's going to work unless you have that curiosity to try and figure it out. I've always... the thing that I absolutely just love about innovation is that I've always felt like it's this giant puzzle or game where-

Ryan:

Right?

Cedric:

... I'm just trying to figure it out and it just keeps changing every day. That's what keeps me on my toes, so I just really love that whole process of just being aggressively curious. Then, as I get those answers along the way, I'm trying to make sure that my customer doesn't get blindsided because you get blindsided if you just keep looking at the same old data in the same old way.

Ryan:

Yes.

Cedric:

Yeah. I don't want that to happen.

Ryan:

Wow. Cedric, I've got to tell you something. This is a podcast interview and you just got me fired up. I you got me extremely motivated this afternoon. Everybody who just listened to this is going to be a better professional and businessperson. I want to thank you. You're a good man. Every time I talk to you, I leave inspired and I feel like I'm smarter. That curiosity point just really resonates with me and I also want to congratulate you because it's rare you listen to any media today and the words "new normal" or COVID or whatever are not mentioned.

What I've taken away from this is the constants of the way people move, and the way organizations move, and the way successful people think independent of good times, bad times. I wanted to give you kudos because I don't know how many more podcast interviews I'll do without hearing about what's happening around us, so I appreciate that, man. This was a welcome break.

Cedric:

Hey, glad to do my part. You know?

Ryan:

Thanks so much, man.

Cedric:

Yeah, absolute pleasure. Ryan, any time, any subject. I always have such a fun time talking with you because you ask some very thought-provoking questions, which I got to keep my gray matter fresh, so it's always fun having a conversation like this with you.

Ryan:

For sure, man. I've got to keep you on your toes.

Ryan: 

Wow.

Patricia:

That was amazing.

Ryan:

That was awesome. I knew it was going to be awesome, Patricia, when we reached out to Cedric. I didn't expect him to bring that much heat.

So for those people who were part of season one, you know that the Babita has transitioned away from the podcast because she's kind of got a busy job these days, but because the season's all about practical transformation tips, it was kind of a no brainer for Patricia to join me because Patricia that's actually what you do for a living, isn't it?

Patricia:

It might just be what you keep me on retainer for, Ryan Barry.

Ryan:

I mean, I keep you on retainer for a lot of reasons, but this is actually your day job. Sometimes you serve as my shrink.

Patricia:

It's my day job. Or dog sitter.

Ryan:

Dog sitter, shrink. So Patricia, let's talk about innovation. Cedric is a boss. We both work with him so we know him a little bit, but I think you probably learned a few things from that interview.

Patricia:

Oh, I did.

Ryan:

What we're going to do this season which is different is instead of talking about misunderstandings, your job is going to be to actually synthesize the learnings for people that you took from the interview to help them get something practical. So take it away, Patricia, talk to us. What did you learn?

Patricia:

Did you know that Cedric... I mean, I'll tell you my summary of what we learned from Cedric in a second, but one of the things that just amazes me about Cedric is in any conversation with him, he just simply lays out these sentences, these phrases that are golden quotes. I wrote down 11 quotes from what he said that are things that could belong in a postcard and one of those famous books that goes to the New York Bestsellers. First one that I wanted... I mean, it wasn't the first one he said, but the one that I want to start this off with is that he said that "innovation is a game." It's a puzzle. I love the fact that he sees innovation as something that is a pleasant thing, something that people do for fun, but challenging as well, because puzzles as we all know...

I mean, there are 10 piece puzzles and there are 10,000 piece puzzles, but they're all challenging. And so he acknowledges innovation is not something easy to do. Another of his amazing quotes leads me to the second point, "ideas are free." What does this mean? There are many of them, right? So it's really hard, this is where the puzzle piece comes in, to make sure that we have, number one, the right ideas and I'll get to that in a second, which he explained very carefully, but number two, knowing how to tackle them because he said quote number three, "You take a lot of swings before you get that hit."

Ryan:

Yes.

Patricia:

Oh my God. That's a sports quote that even I get, and I'm not sports savvy, so that was amazing because he said that because the ideas are free, and because you have to do a lot of things, you have to make sure that you're asking the right questions, and asking the right people, another very important thing that he said, because at the end of the day, you have to make sure that you have the right raw material and that's what he was telling us about.

More than getting the right ideas in the right order from the right people, he made me think of something he didn't even have to say it overtly. He talked about ideas and he talked about innovation having to involve people, and all of a sudden, he had me thinking about people on both sides of the fence. Not only the people that are in the customer side, as in the owners of the brand and the equity, but he had me thinking about the people on our team, the people on the insights team, because at the end of the day, "insights are the ones that make sure the customer is not blindsided." Quote number five. Golden. Right? That's what we do.

Ryan:

That is a good one. Cedric, you're like a quote machine, man.

Patricia:

He is. He's a master. I told you he was a beast. So when he was talking about that, he talked about the fact that insights has a very crucial role in making sure that the innovation journey goes well. He talked about making sure that everybody involved, the people involved, in order for innovation to exist he said people have to be involved. In order for people to be involved and engaged, you have to give them the vision. So immediately my brain went to, "Oh, okay. I understand."

And then he said insights people need to know what part of the business they play in innovation and the customer, the end user, needs to know what part of the portfolio the new innovation fits into. Think about that. It's amazing. I mean, it's stuff that you think, "Oh, well, yeah, that makes sense, but I hadn't thought of it in that clarity." So before we start innovating crazy like scatter gun, I think there's a scatter gun, right? 

Ryan:

What I was raised to say is throw pickles against the wall and see what sticks.

Patricia:

I think I got pasta against the wall. But he's much more elegant than you and me together, my friend.

Ryan:

He is.

Patricia:

Nothing personal. But he said, "You go from using a scatter gun to using a laser gun." And then I thought that was beautiful as well. That's quote number seven. Just saying I'm putting them out there so you all know which ones I thought were the top 10.

So he said get your innovation, get the right ideas, ask the right questions from the right people. How do you make sure they're engaged? Give them a vision, not only an internal vision, how innovation fits into the scheme of business, but an external vision. How is this innovation going to fit into my portfolio and what's in it for you, right? Then he takes all that and he says, "Okay, let's figure out where they work and how they work." And that's when he says you go to a laser gun and you make sure that it's part of the business, it's going to add to the business. And that's how you get innovation. That's why you test asking the right things, making sure you're asking the right questions.

And then he said, quote number eight that I thought was amazing, "Who have you not asked?" So this is not only who have you not asked for ideas within your company, who have you not asked to give you feedback on your ideas, but also immediately my mind went to the customer, to the end user. Who have we not asked? You know how we have the three mores: More people, more usage and more money, right? Have we looked for opportunities that are right outside our scope of vision? Are there any consumers out there that you haven't asked that maybe they might be interested in your new innovation? People that are right there but maybe haven't tried you yet, but could try you with your new innovation, so think about that quote that Cedric gave us. Who have you not asked? "Ask them a different question." Love it. Quote number nine.

And so he took and wrapped this all beautifully and said: in order for you to have a good innovation path, in order for you to have a new good journey, make sure you always know that it's a game, it's a complicated game, but you start with a lot of information and you make sure that you whittle it down appropriately, and you do that by asking the right people the right questions. Sometimes the right people and the right questions are not the ones you've already asked many, many times before, but new questions and new people. Always make sure that you tell the people that are helping you in your journey where they sit in the whole process, why they're important, why it's important to them that we get a good insight.

And then I'm going to leave you with the last golden nugget, which is very self-serving and I love it. He said, "Always look for thought partners." Always look for thought partners. So when you're looking for people to help you, it's all about making sure you get people to help you think, because at the end of the day, and this is the bonus one, "customer isn't always right, but customer always wants to win." And that's why they look for thought partners. So what you have to do is you as the insights person, you're the thought partner to your stakeholders inside the company, right? You're their thought partners, and we at Zappi, we're the thought partners to you, so it's all a large journey. We have to all make sure that we know what part we play.

Ryan:

You know what's funny, before quote 10 I was going to latch onto the quote about the anchoring and the vision, but I think that one's... I'm going to make two comments because I like both of those a lot. The first one or the last comment you make is so important to me because it is the job of the partner to set up the stakeholder for success, not be an order taker. Otherwise, good luck having a job in four years because some software is going to replace you. It's our job to do this, and I think it's a skill Patricia, that more people have than they think, and it's a quote you say all the time, "they just got to lay the egg." They just got to get comfortable doing it because, personally, I have a lot of people that I employ, but I view them as people who are in place to tell me what to do, tell me where we should be going. Tell me how we should change and ultimately make changes.

Which brings me to the second point. I went through this experiment in Q4. You were part of it, you just didn't know it was an experiment. I said to myself, if we give people very little direction, here's why we exist, here's the strategy, what are you going to do in the next 18 months to pull it off? I had a feeling I would be blown away by the level of thinking, planning, coordination, and innovation that happened. It's exactly what happened. Cedric says that very well in our interview, if people know the direction of travel or they know the purpose and they're set up with the right resources to be successful and empowered to make decisions, they will innovate.

And it brings you to the other point, which is you miss a lot in innovation, right? So knowing that means it's okay to fail. It's about learning from failure, so I think... I mean, I could have talked to Cedric all day about this. I miss him, actually. He's somebody who I like to see in person. Maybe, Patricia, as soon as we both get vaccinated, we can fly to Chicago and visit him.

Patricia:

Totally would be cool. I also want to meet that guy that he was talking about that had the idea that nobody had asked him. Remember that one? I want to meet that guy. That guy's like, "I've been talking about this idea for six months." That's when Cedric said that one of the famous quotes who have you not asked? I don't think I'm going to forget that one for a long time.

Ryan:

I mean, you could look at so many businesses in so many examples of that happening. The idea, and this is why I think organizations are changing, you have to let the people closest to the problem and closest to the customer innovate versus the ivory tower alone. Now, you obviously need executives and strategy departments, but the reason that guy had that idea is because he was close to the problem.

Patricia:

Yeah, he was right there doing it. I mean, what's important for me is that Cedric reminds us all, at least he reminded me and I've been around the block a few times, yet Cedric reminds me that you don't have to be an expert.

You just have to know what you know, and the more you do something, then you can become an expert. But just because you think you're an expert, and I'm not talking the circles I promise, it doesn't mean you know it all. Let me rephrase that. You don't have to be an expert to give good input, and the more you work on it, the better you get at it, but you're never going to know all of it. And that's why we always have to be iterating, we always have to be improving not only on our products and our services, but on ourselves and how we think and who we ask. That's so important not to take ourselves so seriously that we think we know all the answers. Let's think of somebody else's input, maybe they have a better question. I love it.

Ryan:

Well, that's the genius behind the lesson Cedric taught us in the interview. He is arguably one of the more accomplished innovation people I've ever met, but has the humility to say, "Hey, dude on the ground. What do you got? What's broken? What am I missing?" And that is actually expertise.

Patricia, episode one's in the books. We got a lot of goodies coming. Next episode we're actually talking to Joseph Chen, who was somebody who's gone through a rodeo of experience. Started at Millward Brown, career corporate insights person. Actually worked with us at Zappi for a couple of years, and now is back client side at Mondelez. And we're going to talk to Joseph of how his experience in technology has completely changed the way he's approached being a corporate insights person. I can't wait for the episode, Patricia, and I can't wait to hear what you think once we're done with it.

Patricia:

Joseph's the reason I'm here. Remember?

Ryan:

This is true. I forgot about this. Joseph is the reason.

Patricia:

He is. He is. So we'll talk to you guys more in two weeks about that. I'll tell you the whole story.

Ryan:

You're going to love that episode. So if you haven't already subscribed to Inside Insights, it's available everywhere where podcasts are available. If you're so inclined, we would love a rating from you. It helps more people get the lessons that we're sharing. If you are seeing somebody do really tangible work in their craft, we want to talk to them. insideinsights@zappistore.com or just hit Patricia and I up. We're easy to find. Thank you for listening. Have a great day and be kind to each other.

Patricia:

Go off and get shit done. Bye.