The guest on this episode of The OxyMorons is one of the most interesting characters I’ve run into in my professional career. Thornton May is a futurist, author, and educator and the chair of the Digital Value Institute. The Digital Value Institute is a new think-tank for identifying how technology is transforming industries and how leaders and organizations can respond. The activities of the Digital Value Institute are coordinated by an Advisory Council of CXO thought leaders from both user organizations and solution providers.
Thornton owns one of my favorite quotes ever, one that I personally have borrowed many times in my own keynotes:
In our contentious times, the ONE Thing that EVERYONE can agree upon is that EVERY Organization, EVERY Executive, EVERY Individual, and EVERY Object is on a digital journey. Sadly, most have no map, no guide and bad shoes.
In the true confessions category, Thornton chaired the search committee (25 years ago this month!) that brought me to AIIM. But the statute of limitations on blaming him for that is only 7 years. He is a big thinker, a creative thinker, a fast-talker -- you would be astounded to see the original auto transcription of this episode -- and an unrepentant bow-tie wearer. And he’s run into a TON of OxyMorons and OxyMoron wannabes in his career.
Critical Background Facts About Thornton
Favorite TV binge watch during COVID -- My favorite originally aired on BBC One from 2003 to 2015. It's called New Tricks and the name is a play on the phrase “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” It features a very powerful, strong mid-career woman who is the boss of an unsolved crimes unit that consists of three retired police officers.
Surprising Item from Your Spotify Playlist -- In 2012, I went to Australia and I went to the Sydney Opera House. Now normally I wouldn't know classical music if it bit me on the backside, but the program that night made an impression on me: 1) Johann Brahms. Piano Concerto Number One in D Minor, Op. 15; 2) Antonin Dvorak -- The Carnival Overture, Op. 92; and 3) Sergei Rachmaninoff -- Symphonic Dance, Op. 45.
Favorite Book Over the Last 12 Months -- Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office by Tevi Troy. It couldn’t be more timely. And you can even read the first chapter for free on Amazon.
1 - As you talk to countless innovators, do you notice any patterns in where their best ideas come from?
I think we've actually flipped the narrative on great innovation. The image for innovation used to be a single individual, working in a cave, alone. But the great innovators of our day -- and I think for the next century -- are going to be the connectors and the connected, those at the center of the collision of ideas and conversations. I initially worried that some of the shared spaces in which innovation occurs dried up during the pandemic, and it would create a hiccup in innovation. But in the process of the pandemic, we figured out new ways to connect, because ultimately the real the real driver of innovation is somebody with a good problem.
COVID changed so much in terms of simply getting things done. Usually, problems will consume the amount of available time available for them. But during COVID, if you’re the Harvard Business School you have to figure out how to get your classes online. If you’re the Mayo Clinic, nobody's going to come to the doctor's office and you need to quickly roll out telemedicine. And if you’re teaching elementary school, you need to quickly figure out how to do tele-teaching. Sure, at first, there were some ugly babies. But ultimately, the urgency of the situation drove people to just figure stuff out.
2 - How do OxyMorons validate what they think is a great idea? Or do they?
In the true innovation space, there's no such thing as right or wrong, there's just non-toxicity. Innovators move the ball a bit, validate whether that worked or didn’t work, learn, and adapt. So, you don’t actually “validate” in an abstract way, you validate by determining whether you moved the ball forward. All of business is just a series of hypotheses, and tests of those hypotheses.
3 - When an OxyMoron begins to pursue a great idea, who or what drives them crazy or pisses them off?
There's a real role for skepticism; skeptical people are the irritant from which the pearl of innovation emerges. This is the energy that drives us to commercialize innovation. But there are some people in any organization who are not skeptical, they just have negative energy. These kind of high maintenance people are so counter-productive -- they drain the energy of OxyMorons.
4 - Do OxyMorons worry about failing?
OxyMorons are amazingly risk aware. But they don't view setbacks as failing. They view them as experiments, and so you do have to let go of ideas that don't work. And that takes courage, because you are asking people to trust you as you move forward. It takes courage to go out there and create something that didn’t exist before.
5 - What do you consider to be the secret sauce of OxyMorons?
You need a lot of energy because you're going to bang into a lot of walls. And that means you also need to have a good sense of humor. At the core, you need to be a happy person. I think happiness is a choice; I choose to surround yourself with people who create this kind of positive energy. As I get older, I try to surround myself with people who are upbeat, because I’ve realized that I’m not a good enough leader or a good enough therapist to fix people who are not.
The great gift that the Renaissance gave humankind was the invention of progress, this idea that things will get better. And I think that one of the traumas that we're having here in the United States and maybe in some other regions around the world is that people have lost this faith in progress. But if we keep plugging away at it, I think we can make things better.
Past Episodes in the Series: