“Software is Feeding the World” is a weekly newsletter for Food/AgTech leaders about technology trends.

Greetings from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dan Maycock of Loftus Labs returns again this week to write about the process of innovation and organizational challenges. Dan is a Principal at Loftus Labs, a data consulting company focused on agriculture companies and has been working in data analytics and engineering for the past 18 years at companies including Boeing, and Amazon as well as co-founding 3 startups. In addition, Dan has worked with several companies, large and small, on effective innovation principles. Here is Dan’s LinkedIn profile.

The views expressed in today’s newsletter are Dan’s views.

Background

In 2007, I had the chance to attend Carnegie Mellon’s branch campus in Mountain View, California to get my MS in Software Management. It was during my time there I met Dr. Stuart Evans, a professor there who, with his wife Dr. Homa Bahrami, co-wrote the book “Superflexibility” based on their work with enterprise innovation. I had the chance to work with Dr. Evans during my time there, and learn about the work they did on the topic.

I was able to take his research, as part of my time at CMU, and leverage it for a practicum while I was working at The Boeing Company where I was working during my masters program. I spent several months working on the 777 program, in partnership with Phantom Works (Boeing’s R&D team) in order to test these principles out in an environment which isn’t big on innovative swings and rapid changes to their internal processes.

Incorporating Superflexibility into Boeing’s manufacturing process for the 777 program created 9 opportunities for technology and process innovation. It was estimated to cut $76 million dollars from the total annual manufacturing cost of the program.

Because of these principles used during the source of this engagement, we were also able to develop and implement technology initiatives coming out of this work which resulted in a much faster implementation timeline than what’s typical for an established airplane program.

Given the success of the work I did at Boeing, I went onto work at Slalom Consulting to try and implement this body of work at other Fortune 500 companies Slalom was working with. Over the next several years, I was able to deploy Superflexibility principles at 21 companies through the implementation and development of innovation programs at each company.

At the 12 month check in, 11 of those companies were continuing to use those principles and were able to drive impactful innovation long term across their companies.

At the end of doing this work, I was able to take the 1,000+ interviews I collected during my work and write a book myself on the impact of Superflexibility across the companies I had the chance to work with called “Building the Expo”. I then went on to continue using Superflexiblity at a number of companies I worked with, from Amazon to Allan Bros and found the methods and principles to work around developing and implementing innovation cultures and practices from the company executives down to individual teams.

This works across industries, and has proven just as effective in ag companies as it did across several other verticals.

What does this have to do with agribusiness though?

Good question - even though a lot of these principles were tested and validated in corporate settings, I’ve been working the past 4 years in the agriculture industry to apply these principles to ag vendors, farms, and ag tech companies. The origins of this work, I’m told by Dr. Evans, actually originates in agriculture so the very roots of superflexibility (pardon the pun) focus around optimization in an agricultural context.

I’ve found that each principle can be carried out in any context, but managing risk and being innovative is most important in settings like a farm where long term planning, the ability to pivot, and staying agile as an organization are even more important given how many variables are outside the control of a farmer. From microbial content, to weather systems, there’s lots to account for that can’t be predicted too far in the future.

Furthermore, farming takes years to take effect, from growing plants to changing the balance of your soil, nothing can be done in a week. It takes years, sometimes decades, for big changes to take shape and so leveraging best practices for innovation are even more impactful given you’re literally betting the farm on big decisions that don’t allow for multiple at bats in a rapid period of time.

So when you innovate, you better get it right and you better have the right processes setup to make sure you can stay profitable and competitive so you still have a farm to pass on at the end of your life.

What follows is a description of those principles, and some examples of how each can be incorporated at your company to help drive impactful innovation at any level of your organization.
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​Note: All images come from Drs. Stuart Evans and Homa Bahrami’s presentation material related to Superflexibility and used with permission.

Principle 1: Strategizing for Maneuvering

This first principle emphasizes the need to shift from fire fighting to fire prevention – going from corrective business practices, to preemptive ones. When a revision trigger occurs prompting a change within your company, are you prone to being reactive and being defensive? Or are you proactive and focusing on what may happen on a future date to stay ahead of competitors?

Sub-optimal practice: Positioning your company to perform corrective actions in a reactive state, and playing the defensive stance based on what’s impacting your company currently vs anticipating what will / could happen and putting steps in place to handle “rogue waves” as they hit.
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​Why this often doesn’t shift: Companies often take the position of “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” and often wait for a sizable revision trigger to prompt the need for change in some aspect, large or small, to the company’s direction. Being on the offense in anticipation of what may happen in the future though, puts the company in a proactive position to drive preemptive decision making and ensure a smooth transition prior to the revision trigger taking place.

Best Practice: Continuing to look at new revenue generation opportunities, potential changes to the company culture, and other related and equally impactful “pivots” to the company as it stands today, in an atmosphere of open collaboration and ideation while also staying focused on what’s bringing profit in the door currently.

How this applies to Ag: It’s important to continually be looking ahead at crop trends, ag technologies, and the changing policy climate. All because you have a profitable agribusiness today doesn’t mean things can change quickly given the state of the global economy and ecosystem today. Putting strategies in place to ensure you’re continually on the offense means you’re best prepared when a revision trigger hits your business.

Principle 2: Executing by Recalibrating

This next principle emphasizes the need to get rid of bad ideas iteratively, so the best ideas can quickly be implemented and evolve through recalibration. Too often a bad idea gets recirculated over and over again for several reasons, from having an internal executive sponsor to fear of alienating one or more employees.

Having a process in place to rapidly test, validate, and reject an idea if needs be can help improve on the throughput of ideation to get to successful concepts and ideas more effectively.

Sub-optimal practice: Companies hold onto bad ideas or projects for far too long, which creates a number of problems in keeping a company agile by bogging down critical resources which could be spent on more effective initiatives.

Why this often doesn’t shift: This happens either because an executive introduced the concept, a sizable investment has been made, or people hesitate to speak against the idea itself out of fear/concern of blow-back or repercussions to themselves personally.

Best Practice: Build processes within your company which allow you to rapidly prototype ideas and dispose concepts and ideas quickly which don’t pan out, using a robust rejection mechanism to evaluate ongoing efficacy and discontinue efforts which clear the way for new ideas and concepts to be deployed and validated.

How this applies to Ag: There’s often “sacred cows” inside of farming companies, given the multi-generational aspect of farming and the surrounding companies that work with that farm along with cultural norms, and often low attrition within farm companies. This means bad or outdated ideas can stick around longer than they should, which can be toxic to a company’s ability to stay competitive.

Continually doing a review of business practices, policies, and long held beliefs is important to make sure the right ideas are making it through the management team while those things that no longer have a place are able to get sunsetted.

Principle 3: Organizing by Federating

Typically, most corporate employees fail to grasp the three dimensions which must be considered for successful deployment, adoption, and improvement for projects. Personality, anatomy, and circulation work together to define how a company operates.

The personality of an organization (culture, customs, etc), the anatomy of an organization (how decisions are made) as well as the circulation of a company (hierarchy, decision making process, etc) all matter when it comes to building a cohesive and innovative company.

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​Sub-optimal practice: Companies neglect one or more of the dimensions which must be implemented for successful deployment, adoption, and improvement for projects. Ignoring the personality of a company, the anatomy of the organization, and the circulation of communication and leadership leads to organization issues, attrition, and long-term erosion of the company itself.
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​Why this often doesn’t shift: Company leaders often struggle with tunnel vision through getting caught up in the day-to-day business and sometimes have a hard time seeing the forest from the trees at times. Especially for a company which is currently profitable, stepping back to ensure the company remains innovative and competitive long term means having a robust plan and roadmap which takes the personality, anatomy, and circulation of a company into account.
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​Best Practice: When performing strategic planning, or innovation workshops, take into account the company’s current anatomy (DNA of the company, mission, major revenue streams, etc), the personality of the company (culture, people inside company, etc), and circulation (how decisions get made, how they get communicated) in order to ensure the implementation of the plan is as effective as possible.

How this applies to Ag: Decision making tends to vary a good deal from ag company to ag company depending on the ownership structure of the company. From investment-backed management teams, to fourth generation farm families still running the company. Regardless of the makeup of the company though, the same principles apply as to how a healthy company should operate in order to maximize innovation within the organization.

The deeper the ownership roots of the company, the more the company can be run by “the way we’ve always done things” and that can put the company at a steep disadvantage from other companies setting up decision making, culture, and process around best practices. It’s important to step back and ensure your company is leveraging best practices for inter-company operations and bring in outside parties if needs be to provide that level of objective guidance in the form of an outside COO, advisor, or board of advisors if needs be.

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​Principle 4: Organizing by Recycling​
When a new process or methodology comes along, like LEAN, ITIL, or ISO-9000 comes along, new teams are created with new employees and the lessons learned from previous initiatives are disregarded, leading to costly reinvention of existing lessons learned. Instead this principle focuses on pulling out the reusable elements which worked best, to help create quicker methods down the road which work more effectively and have less learning error.

Leveraging best practices to make sure what’s learned is held onto regardless of the outcome, to avoid making the same mistakes again is critical to effective innovation.

Sub-optimal practice: When a new process or methodology comes along, like LEAN, ITIL, or ISO-9000 comes along, new teams are created with new employees and the lessons learned from previous initiatives are disregarded, leading to costly reinvention of existing lessons learned.
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Why this often doesn’t shift: Collecting and reviewing collective knowledge across the company can be difficult to do, for any organization. It takes a company wide effort to capture and share reusable knowledge in a company as initiatives and methodologies are introduced, adopted, and replaced over time.
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​Best Practice: Focus on pulling out the reusable elements which worked best, to help create quicker methods down the road which work more effectively and have less learning error. Create a documentation mechanism for capturing corporate knowledge inside the company, as a way to capture reusable elements across the company.
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​How this applies to Ag: Ag companies can be underinvested in technology, and many are a good 10-15 years behind companies in other industries depending on investment priorities, ownership, size of the company, and health of the balance sheet. It’s important though, regardless of where you’re at with internal tools to capture, manage, and share data and information that the knowledge sharing that arises from analyzing past decisions can get captured and shared in some way so lessons learned aren’t lost as time goes on.

Doing trials, recording outcomes, and sharing findings can be done with basic email but tools such as notion can also help with organizational knowledge management and should be prioritized as a useful long term tool to help make sure the right insights from innovative exercises, trials, tests, and projects aren’t lost to time.
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​Principle 5: Leading by Aligning

Too often, the messages to be shared in order to make initiatives successful are delayed, miscommunicated, or stopped short because of the top-down hierarchy getting in the way. Creating an organization built around peer-to-peer relationships can not only help more effectively communicate key points but will also help with user adoption and sponsorship as well as driving innovation initiatives more effectively throughout the organization.

Sub-optimal practice: Companies bogged down by hierarchical decision making have a hard time communicating messages which have to be shared in order to make initiatives successful which can be caused by delays, miscommunications, or stopping short all together based on the organization’s decision-making hierarchy.
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​Why this often doesn’t shift: Companies can be stuck with poor communication channels due to the hierarchy of the organization, which can be very difficult to change. Finding methods to build peer-to-peer based processes for messaging and decision making, regardless of the company structure.
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​Best Practice: Focus on pulling out the reusable elements which worked best, to help create quicker methods down the road which work more effectively and have less learning error. Create a documentation mechanism for capturing corporate knowledge inside the company, as a way to capture reusable elements across the company.

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​How this applies to Ag: Ag companies can be very rigid around the leadership structure of a company, especially if it’s a legacy of family members making up the leadership team of the company. Oftentimes ownership isn’t something extended to those outside of a family in that case, and the decision making falls within the ownership structure. In other cases, where investment groups are managing the ag company from a distance, the ground truth and the insight gained from reports / spreadsheets can be different which can cause a breakdown in decision making.

Restructuring management to align to expertise in the company, bringing other people into the decision making process, and focusing on empowering those in the best position to make the decision vs tying decision making to just the person or people writing the checks can make a big difference in empowering middle management to make important decisions and help drive better results throughout the company which in turn drives more innovative opportunities companywide.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to Superflexibilty than what’s covered here, but gives a high level summary of principles which are necessary for effective innovation. More information is available by buying the book, but you can also contact me directly at dmaycock@gmail.com if you’re interested in learning more about the work performed to date implementing these principles in companies around the world or talking directly to Drs. Evans and Bahrami.

When thinking about implementing any kind of innovation program at your company though, it’s important to pay attention to the following principles to start.
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​Interesting vs Impact: Make sure the innovation solutions you’re deploying have a measurable impact to your business vs building “interesting” outcomes which don’t tie directly to a business problem

Culture Clash: Change can be painful at times, make sure to include people in the conversation while recognizing not everyone will be on board all the time and which is ok. Watch out for “Sacred Cows”.

Incremental Progress: Make sure your efforts are delivering value incrementally vs waiting too long to deliver something to the broader org, in order to continue getting support / buy-off outside of team

For ag companies, innovation can be tricky for all the reasons discussed above. From being mostly reactive to the elements, to working within multi-generational leadership structures and cultures, it can be hard to build an agile organization that is constantly trying new innovations. It’s more important than ever though, with all the changes affecting our world, that agribusiness can shake those encumbrances though and help to improve our global food system as a result.

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Good luck innovating! And a special thanks to Rhishi Pethe for letting me share these insights!

In the News

AgTech and Agronomy

AMVAC and NewLeaf Symbiotics, have announced a new partnership to bring new and existing biologicals solutions to North American crop markets beginning in 2023. It will harness the complementary marketing and technical strengths of each partner to expand the application of existing products and advance the development of future products utilizing the combined technical resources of both companies.

Robotics and Automation

​John Deere announced its return to strip-till with five models in its new ST series​

Supply Chain

​BASF Acquires Cargill Canola Seed Production Facility​

Sustainability

The global land squeeze - WRI proposes a comprehensive approach of four interconnected pillars: Produce-Protect-Reduce-Restore.

​Trifecta of factors affect Southwest water demand: Megadrought, population growth and a warmer atmosphere contribute to water availability

Smallholder

​India, China, and Indonesia lead AgTech investments in APAC

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About me

My name is Rhishi Pethe. I lead the product management team at Project Mineral (focused on sustainable agriculture). The views expressed in this newsletter are my personal opinions.