By MJ Petroni and Jessica Long

For eons, and across many cultures, humans have conceived of creating value in one very simple way: the four seasons of a year which correlate to planting seeds, helping them take root, harvesting crops, and plowing the ground to prepare for the next planting. Whether it’s a product or an expense management process, every idea goes through these four phases—or seasons—of innovation.

Business could think of innovation in the same way. My colleague Miles Kierson often defines the phases of execution as formulation, manifestation, realization and culmination—four phases which correspond well to spring, summer, fall and winter. Each season has its own characteristics, its own feel, pace and tensions. Each season also requires different tools, skills and strategies.

In a small enterprise, all four phases of a project or initiative may be executed by the same team. In larger organizations there may be handoffs from one team to another as one phase ends and another begins. A team that carries projects through the entire cycle will need to include people with diverse thinking styles and ways of working so that it can stay effective as the demands of the project shift from season to season. Teams that are handing off projects may be highly specialized, but chances are they will have at least occasional requests for support from other teams working on other parts of the lifecycle. In both of these scenarios, it’s useful to understand what kind of thinking you or your team are best suited to provide in relationship to what each season of innovation requires.

Before looking at the thinking styles and worktypes as they apply throughout the seasons, you may want to read the article What Kind of Thinker Are You? and our companion piece, Being a Thought Partner, and/or take this quiz on worktypes to find out how your way of thinking and working fits into this model.

Before anything can be planted, there has to be room to plant and an idea of what needs to be grown. In the winter, it is time to culminate the preceding cycle of innovation, repair the fields and equipment, and prepare for the next cycle. This includes planning the next year’s crops and gathering seeds while we live off of the reserves from the fall harvest. Perhaps one of the hardest seasons, especially if not planned for well, the end season is also the stage to make room for new growth. In the business world, the culmination of projects means paying attention to lessons learned and ideas conceived of in the past year (the gathering of seeds) to integrate into the next year’s work.

Before a new project can begin, there must be space for it. If you think of the winter season, it’s a time for clearing fields, planning plots and gathering seeds while living off of the reserves of the preceding year.

During the winter, each kind of thinking has a role:

Winter Roles

Spring is the time to surface ideas, plant as many new opportunities as possible, and make sure the right combination of water and care are there to help new things sprout and take root. During this time of year, we have lots of freedom to take risks—but it’s still very important to make good decisions about what to plant, as we won’t be able to see the results for a while. In the business environment, activities of this stage often include planning for product launches and seeking additional funding, holding kickoff meetings and orienting new team members. The spring ends when plants are beginning to take deeper root and appear from underground, and in the business context, this means that we move to the summer of innovation when ideas are beginning to take shape in material form—to manifest.

Spring Roles

Summer’s tasks center around manifestation, including making sure that you make critical choices about which plants to nurture and which to let go of as things start to grow and take up space and resources. The focus of your decisions shifts from what new ideas to introduce to which new sprouts should be cultivated and nurtured.

The summer ends when plants begin to be harvestable. In business, this means that we move to the fall when we begin to realize the benefit of our work in consistent, long-term revenue or other results.

Summer Roles

In the fall, the task at hand is to quickly and thoroughly harvest all the available product of the planting season. We must have expertise and attention to detail to know just when and how to pick fruit, store it, distribute it, and save its seeds. In the business world, much attention is paid to getting every last piece of fruit—as evidenced in our focus on efficiency and optimization. But just as the skills to gather every piece of fruit have little to do with those needed to know which trees to plant, optimization and process change must be considered of as part of a much larger cycle that spans the entire year.

Fall Roles

In order to collaborate effectively, it’s important to assess individual thinking styles on your own team.

1. Make sure your team is clear about its scope. Is it formulating new initiatives? Manifesting them? Realizing (maintaining) them? Or shutting them down to create room for new things? Make sure your team is designed with those seasons in mind.

2. Determine each team member’s thinking styles. Most people have 2-3 areas they are strong in (think ‘genius zone’ and several others they are alright at—and maybe a few they need support in). Gather this information in a spreadsheet or other notes listing ‘genius,’ ‘competent’ or ‘needs support.’ There’s nothing wrong with needing support at an individual level—part of how to build an effective culture of collaboration is accomplished by building potential thought partnerships within the team between different kinds of thinkers (for diversity of thought) and between similar thinkers (for capacity and stability).

3. Identify thinking styles which are weak or missing from the team. Ideally, a team which is responsible for a full cycle of innovation, from conceiving ideas launch, scaling and completion, will have a balance of people so that each thinking style is represented. If that’s not the case, they will have to work with other teams to round out their thinking styles in order to complete that cycle.

4. Build thought partnerships between members of your team and other teams. Round out and synchronize the plans and mindsets between teams by identifying pairings of thinkers who complement or resonate with each other. Read more about thought partnerships at www.causeit.org/being-a-thought-partner  

5. Where possible, build reciprocal links between teams. Reciprocal links occur when some members each of team belong equally to both teams, such that a larger purpose exists for those members who touch multiple elements of business strategy. (This concept is also used in some collective/networked leadership models like Holocracy and Sociocracy, but has a more specific meaning there).

6. Consider rescoping your teams to create overlap. While it might seem counterintuitive, organizations like Google use overlapping responsibilities as an approach to encourage diversity of thought. Teams with overlapping responsibilities and scope, but different combinations of thinking styles, can boost the overall excellence of thought and execution in an organization.

• Take the Worktypes™ test by Jive Software
• Talk to Causeit about your organization’s design and thinking styles

Further reading:

• What Kind of Thinker Are You? by Mark Bonchek and Elisa Steele
• Being a Thought Partner  by MJ Petroni
• What Google Learned From its Quest to Build the Perfect Team by Charles Duhigg