Creativity and innovation is imperative for twenty first century organizations. Martha Garriock, Program Manager for internet giant, Cisco Systems, talks about grasping these skills amidst global competition. By Deborah Tarrant.
Martha Garriock was just eight-years-old when she started developing the skill set that has proved invaluable in her corporate life. She learned the nuances of facilitating teams for maximum output, how to be a confident presenter in front of large groups of people and how to brainstorm and solve problems – fast. Perhaps most significantly, she learned how to think outside the box. Martha’s skills – acquired through her involvement in an extra-curricular program called Destination ImagiNation (DI) – epitomize the creativity and innovation that’s imperative for twenty first century organizations to cut it in a high-velocity, post-internet world.
In particular, she is undaunted by taking risks. In Martha’s fast-moving working environment as a Cisco Systems Program Manager, overseeing eight project teams, developing trailblazing advanced technical support software, there are no wrong answers, just different ones,” she says. As a leading global company, Cisco recognizes that inclusion and diversity of thought is a business imperative. Attracting, developing and retaining the best employees, wherever they may be found, gives Cisco access to new ideas, promotes better decision making, and creates a workforce that mirrors their customers and the world at large. Such a company seems the perfect fit for Toronto-based Martha, who as a result, at just 28 has a strategic role with a global focus. In short, she hit her career fast-track running. Twenty years after she started honing her skills, she views the impact of what some might simply view as child’s play, the foundation of her DI experience, coming through positively everyday and, indeed, ffecting the success of one of the global leaders in Information Technology.
For Martha it all started with a birthday party – her first teambased DI challenge – in Grade Two. In the beginning, it was all about the fun. “I went over to a friend’s house. We made cupcakes and we made our alien outfits out of garbage bags, paper and straws. We had to put a skit together, which we presented in the gym of my elementary school…it was about doing something that wasn’t school or sport. It was outgoing and dramatic and I loved the drama. I was always the one delivering the cheesy soliloquys at the end,” she recalls.
However, what seemed simply like having a blast to a young school girl looked different from the perspective of her parents, Faith and Roger Garriock, dedicated volunteers to the DI program, now the world’s largest (non-profit) creative problem solving program for children. DI started 26 years ago when a group of inspired parents determined their children could develop real life skills, beyond those traditionally taught in school. Roger Garriock, a senior IBM executive at the time, had the prescient notion that, given the experience, kids could use their imaginations, work in teams, explore a problem with fresh eyes and learn better communication and interpersonal skills – ultimately, developing poise and self-confidence. As he told Thinking Business, “With DI, kids learn how to take informed risks in a non-threatening, safe environment…skills and attributes that are invaluable when they grow up.” Some kids are naturally gifted in some areas but you don’t get many opportunities to practice,” he says. “You graduate from University, get thrown into the working world and what experience have you had in facilitating teams, doing presentations and how well developed are your problem-solving skills?”
Millions of kids around the world have subsequently benefited from DI which is now running in 49 US states, two Canadian provinces and about 40 other countries, thanks to the dedication of hundreds of thousands of volunteers. And Martha, the second of Roger and Faith’s three daughters, is living testimony to the theory that such skills can be nurtured. Not long after this interview she would hop a plane for San Jose, California to present to a Cisco Senior Vice President and his direct staff. “I know what I want to say. I have particular messages I want to deliver. In truth, I’ve been doing these things for a long time,” she says. “DI made me able to talk to anyone. It helps you pull things out of thin air! When you’re in a meeting and someone throws something at you and you have no idea – you’re thinking this is not what I had planned. “I was trained from an early age to take a five minute break and come up with something on the fly that will accommodate the scenario.”
There are two key elements to the DI program. In the first, a team of children is given several weeks to solve a challenge (in anything from engineering to theatre arts). Their solutions are presented to appraisers who determine the best and most innovative outcomes. Teams compete at different levels, culminating in a global DI event. A further agility-enhancing dimension of DI is provided by Instant Challenges where the kids are given five minutes to solve a problem they’ve never seen before. They have to think on-the-spot under pressure. “That’s real life,” insists Roger Garriock. “Everyone has the opportunity to be well prepared, but if you’re suddenly put into a situation where you’ve never seen the task before, that develops a whole new part of the brain.”
> hitting the ground running
For Martha, the results of her DI experience truly started emerging at university – where she studied Applied Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering. “In engineering, every course is about problem solving and I was able to take on leadership roles.” She competed in her last DI tournament at University, (along with several team members she’d worked with from the outset) and won the DI global competition with a colourful piece about a group of people devising a way to survive as Atlantis sunk.
By the time she hit the fulltime workforce she was ready for action. Martha had abandoned her original ambition to become a doctor, deciding instead to follow her father into the IT industry. When her first job plans fell over, she started listening to a university friend who raved about this company called Cisco where he worked in technical support. Although Technical Support wasn’t on her list of dream jobs, Cisco was unique. With its tagline ‘changing the way we work, live, play, and learn’, the company is a pioneer and worldwide leader in Internet networking services and equipment. “[My friend] loved Cisco’s young, energetic feel. It was a place where things couldn’t grow fast enough, each employee was genuinely empowered to make sure the company would perform,” she says.
“I had to think carefully about what I was passionate about. I had wanted to be a doctor because I liked working with people, I wanted to help people and I like to problem solve…technical support fitted that description.” She admits when she went for the interview she didn’t know a lot about the company or its products, but she convinced them that her degree and background with DI enabled her to talk to anybody and walk them through how to solve a problem. She got the job and moved to California in October, 2000.
Her timing was good. She was able to develop technical expertise in voice-over IP in the early days before it went mainstream. “I never knew all the answers but I knew the right questions to ask. My communications skills came through.” In her second year, she was given a team leadership role, and by 2003 she’d moved to project management in worldwide operations where she was asked to explore a problem. Unfortunately, the problem she was asked to explore was not high on anyone’s priority list. Martha decided to find someone in the organization to “sponsor” her project. “If I think it’s important enough, then I’m going to see the right people and see if I can get something done about it,” she says. In many corporate environments this would have been high risk, but Martha was unfazed. “In fact, it was that problem that circled back and gave me the visibility up to the Vice President, who I now work for,” she reports.
Martha, it seems, had been earmarked for challenges. By her mid-20s she was a worldwide product manager and moving rapidly towards managing one of Technical Support’s Strategic Initiatives. “I was still in technical services, but I had been given a product to manage. I was asked to bring this new support capability to light, so I had to learn about software development.” Here was a role that would seriously test her mettle as a leader. She had to handle the hard news, such as the possibility that the whole project would be canned, if not delivered by a certain date. “Do you tell the team that, or just help them to move forward?,” she questioned. Previously, unrealistic expectations and timelines had been set. “In the end, I was the last man standing,” she says.
Then came the call from her Vice President who asked her to launch his strategic initiative. “Could I be the program manager and could we launch this in a week?” Sure! To Martha this was a giant instant challenge. Martha made a rapid transition from the “nitty-gritty” detail of managing products to the big picture of program management. She had to step up and figure out the scope for the Technical Support’s initiative. It was a lot of fun, she insists, observing distinct parallels with DI.
“We got all the right people in the room to present their ideas. No answer was wrong. We then walked through the ideas, prioritized them and identified which we would propose to be projects the next year. We built the business cases, formed the teams and today we are executing on the ideas that were generated in that brainstorm. I didn’t have the answers on my own. It was the power of our innovative Cisco team, all the people from across our organization who collaboratively came up with the right ideas.”
The Advanced Support Tools program is developing new capabilities for technical support, so Cisco can provide faster, more accurate support to their customers. As a program manager, Martha is focused on the value it delivers to the business, running a budget of some $20+ million and ensuring the teams have the right members and can execute on time. Perplexing contemporary management issues are on the agenda. For example - how do you reduce risks but still innovate and encourage a team to take risks?
“Something I learned very early in DI is that things don’t always go right. In a team, there’s always someone vying for a certain role. In DI, there could be parents with political agendas. But you still need to manage meetings, get people to agree on a concept and take action. “I do all the fun presentations and executive communications – if we need others within Cisco to work on our team, my role is to work with them to get the right resources assigned and have their buy-in to move the project forward. It’s all about partnerships,” says Martha who’s the solo member of the team in Toronto, the rest are spread across the world from Brussels to Sydney and predominantly in the US.
While business travel is often in the diary – at least a week per month – the rest of the time she works virtually. “Cisco is all about changing the way we work and exploring how we use our own technology to evolve and accelerate the teams – we may be in different parts of the world but we can often see each other when we talk.” Videoconferencing is a well-used tool, she says. “You really can work from anywhere in the world and be successful.” Careerwise, Martha has covered a lot of ground in a short time. When prompted she observes most of her program management peers are in their 30s and 40s. “I love learning from those around me, there is so much wisdom in experience.”
So where to from here? Her recent challenges, to a certain extent, have turned her head. “I used to think I wanted to be the Vice President, but I’ve realized I’d be happy to be a senior strategist. I am okay not being the decision maker. I’m more of a behind-the-scenes, make-it-happen person. I enjoy the level of intellect I work with today. I am totally intrigued listening to senior leaders talk through the issues they’re looking at.”
On the personal front, she’s just bought a house, which she renovated with experienced project-management efficiency in six weeks. “It’s the first time I’ve used silver insulation tape for its real purpose,” she admits. Previously, it has served her well for taping together costumes or robot props for DI. She also still maintains an active interest in the program doing appraisals at tournaments and talking to parents about the benefits. Her immediate family remains involved in DI. Faith Garriock runs the DI program for the whole of British Columbia, while Martha’s sisters Sarah and Rebekah help with appraisals and write books of instant challenges.
Officially retired from IBM, Roger Garriock runs DICor, a corporate take on DI established following requests from organisations who wondered why the kids were having all the fun and rapid development. DICor channels its profit into the NFP DI program. “With DI, kids learn how to take informed risks in a non-threatening, safe environment…skills and attributes that are invaluable when they grow up.”
> innovative resources
- DIcor is Destination Imaginatin’s corporate consultation/education division. SAI Global is a business partner with DIcor. For further details on Dicor creative problem solving and workshops visit saiglobal.com
- www.cisco.com - Seminars, Events, Training, and Certification can help you keep pace with changing technologies.
- www.saiglobal.com - SAI Global has helped thousands of companies in a broad range of industries achieve their business goals through training and consulting solutions in standards, compliance, and process improvement techniques.