Innovation Excellence Weekly - Issue 29

 

 

April 19, 2013 

 

  Issue 29 – April 19, 2013  2013 

1. 

.......................... ........................... ........................... ............................. ...................... .......………….. Greg Satell What is Innovat Innovation?  ion? .............

2. 

P roto rotottyping : E ng ag e in a (B uck uckminster minster Ful Fulle ler) r) D ial ialog og ue with R ea eallity  ….... Lyden Foust

3. 

B uil uilding ding an A g ile Org aniza nizattion …………..…………….……..……...……… Shoaib Shaukat

4. 

Innovation Innova tion Fail Failss B eca ecaus us e of C orpora orporate te Antibo Antibodies dies ……………..…. ..... Stefan Lindegaard

5. 

Innovation Innovat ion vers us P roduct Developm Development  ent  .………………...……… Simmons and Crawford

6. 

Innovation Innovat ion Li Litm tmus us T Tes estt – Ta  Taking king Owne Owners rs hip ………………………..………. Paul Hobcraft

7. 

Forg e Your F ront Li Line, ne, Libera Liberatte Your L ea eade ders rs  ……….…….................…. Matthew E May

8. 

D on’t be A fraid of Tr Trial ial-a -andnd-E E rror  …………………….…….……………..…….. Jorge Barba

9. 

Own the B eha ehavi vior  or  …………………………………………………………... ..….. Mike Shipulski

10. 

Dealing Deal ing with Fast C Cha hang ng e in the C ont ontext ext o off Innovat Innovation ion …………..….  Stefan Lindegaard

Your hosts,  hosts, Braden Kelley, Julie Anixter and and  Rowan Gibson, are innovation writers, speakers and strategic advisors to many of the world’s leading companies.  

“Our mission is to help you achieve innovation excellence inside your own organization by making innovation resources, answers, and best practices accessible for the greater good.”

Cover Image credit: Question Question  from Bigstock

 

 

What is Innovation?  Posted on  on  A A pri l 14, 2013 2013 by  Gr eg S atel atelll 

Everywhere you look, people are talking about innovation. There are conferences and gurus, workshops and webinars, apostles and practitioners.

But what is it, really? It’s hard to go about the practice of innovation when there is so much confusion about what it actually is. Some have supposed frameworks (i.e. discovery/invention/innovation), but to be honest, I don’t find them particularly helpful.  

It seems obvious to me that a common sense definition of innovation is that it is a process of finding novel solutions to important problems. Unfortunately,, in order to make innovation palatable to business organizations, many have tried to narrow the definition to make Unfortunately m ake it more purpose driven. That’s getting it backwards, after all it’s businesse s that need to adapt.

A Question Concerning Technology Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Clearly, the reason that businesses are interested in innovation is that we are living in an increasingly

technological world and, for any business to consistently earn a return, it needs to develop technology.

As  Kevin Kelly points out in  As in What Technology W ant antss , even the use of the word “technology” relatively new, serious use of the term only dates back about half a century. So it’s not something we have a lot of experience with, li ke operations or accounting.

Martin Heidegger was the first person to seriously tackle the issue in his classic 1949 essay,  essay,  The Question Concerning Technology, where

he argues that technology both involves uncovering (i.e. bringing forth) and enframing (i.e. putting in context of a particul ar use).

 

The definition is extremely insightful and useful, not least because we tend to think of technology (including things like legal concepts and business processes) as something we create rather than uncover. As I pointed out in an earlier post about how  how  technology evolves, we create technology by harnessing and then exploiting forces that were already there.

So, if we want to innovate by creating new technologies, we need to first discover discover things and then figure out how to put them to good use.

Penicillin vs. DNA To see where the discussion of innovation often runs into trouble it’s helpful to look at two often cited discoveries: That o f penicillin and the

structure of DNA.

Penicillin was discovered by accident when  when Alexander Fleming left a petri dish open and came back to find his bacteria had died. He traced the phenomenon to a strange mold that we know know as the wonder drug, penicillin.

The structure of DNA, on the other hand, was no accident. In fact, many were searching for it, including such luminaries as  as  Linus Pauling, the greatest chemist of the day. The answer, however, eluded everyone except for two relatively unknown researchers,  researchers,  James Watson and Francis Crick, who combined several novel approaches to solve the problem.

You can see the difference: Both are discoveries and technologies, but only one is the product of innovation. We learn little by studying the discovery of penicillin (except, of course to pay at tention), but a great deal from how Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. They were, in a very real sense, the first  first open innovators. 

Discovery/Invention/Innovation One popular way to frame the innovation process is to break it down into discovery (new knowledge), Invention (new technologies) and innovation (useful things like products and services). However, it doesn’t take much thinking to realize that this isn’t very useful because it

confuses work products with work processes.

 

For example, both penicillin and the discovery of DNA were both the products of discovery (and eventually, by Heidegger’s def inition, became

technologies), but in one the process was accidental and the other the process was innovative, combining new techniques in chemistry, biology and physics in ways no one had thought of before.

And that is a very crucial point. It is absolutely senseless to argue what constitutes a co mmercial product or service (it is, after all, a matter of context rather than of quality), but finding novel solutions to important problems is a crucial component of modern business life.

The Innovation Management Matrix Revisited To finish up, I’d like  to return to an  an earlier discussion on Innovation Excellence about whether innovation needs a purpose by introducing a

modified version of the  the Innovation Management Matrix I published in Harvard Business Review .

Each of the four quadrants represents an area of innovation in that each requires finding novel solutions to important problems and as well as the opportunity to create new products and services. (If you doubt the importance of quantum teleportation, see my earlier article ar ticle on the  the next digital paradigm).

By arbitrarily determining that Netflix and the iPhone are innovations and the discovery of the structure of DNA and quantum teleportation are not, we would be unnecessarily limiting ourselves and therefore m issing opportunities. After all, one man’s purpose is another man’s folly.  

 

They do, however, require separate and distinct innovation processes and that’s where the discussion becomes important. In or der to  to manage

innovation effectively, you need to focus on one set of processes or your organization organization will become hopelessly muddled.

However, you will still need to gain some competence in other quadrants or you will miss opportunities (as Apple is doing now). Finding the right mix of research, partnering, mining the organization for disruptive ideas and engineering improvements is essential for every organization.

Note: Special thanks to  to R alph alph Ohr  for helping to hone some of my ideas on this topic.  

image credit: janetnewenham janetnewenham.com .com 

Greg Satell is an internationally recognized authority on Digital Strategy and Innovation. He consults and speaks in the areas of digital innovation, innovation management, digital marketing and publishing, as well as offshore web and app development. His blog is  is Digital Tonto and you can  can follow him on Twitter. 

 

Prototyping: Engage in a (Buckminster Fuller) Dialogue with Reality  Posted on  on  A A pri l 14, 2013 2013 by  Lyden Foust  

In our world, speculation is bad. We W e see many people accumulate mountains of information and data from studies and statistics but never venture to speculate on the larger ramifications of this information or connect it all into a theory.

On the other hand, we have all met that person who constantly speculates. All they do is talk about all the ideas they have, how they could make millions, and how the world has it in for them.

The great inventor  inventor Buckminster Fuller was neither of these people. Fuller was constantly coming up with ideas for possible inventions, makin g him like… everyone else. What set him apart was that he noticed early on that many people have great ideas but were afraid to put them into physical form. To set him apart from the dreamers, fuller created a strategy for turning speculations into realiti es.

The Artifact S tra trate tegg y Working off his ideas, Buckminster would make sketches in a notebook. Here is the key, he would make these sketches as quickly as possible. As soon as an idea entered his head, he would capture it on paper. Next he would make crude models of his ideas, if they seemed feasible at all he would proceed to crafting working prototypes. By actually translating his ideas into tangible objects, he could gain a sense of whether they were potentially interesting or merely ridiculous.

If the prototypes passed his test, he would take them to the next level and make public “artifacts” of his ideas to see how people would respond.

One artifact that he made was the Dymaxion car. It was meant to be much more efficient, maneuverable, and aerodynamic than any vehicle in existence, featuring three wheels and an unusual shape.

However, in making the artifact public, he realized several faults in it’s design and reformulated it. Although the Dymaxion car never took off, it

has to this day influenced and astounded engineers and designers. Buckminster would eventually expand this artifact strategy to all of his ideas, including his most famous one  – the Geodesic dome.

 

work Put it to work Have an idea for a product? Make a clay model and pretend you are actually using it. Or even better, make an ugly looking prototype that works like the real product would. Watch how your target market interacts with it.

Have an idea for a service? Map out what the service would look like, and then act out each part. If you can bring in the people you are designing for to interact with the product or service prototype it will inject even more reality into the process.

 Modern D ay Ex E x ampl ample e A great example of building and testing a crude artifact is the online social search engine Aardvark. Before its acquisition by google for $50 million, it was a social search service that connected users with friends or friends-of-friends who were able to answer their questions. Essentially, it humanized search by allowing you to query your extended social network.

Aardvark launched their beta test in 2008, with little to no funding. How did they do it? They literally had people sitting b ehind computers waiting for a question to come in, then they would perform the intended function of querying the persons social network manually. Archaic? Yes, but Aardvark grew by leaps and bounds, validated their product for the cost of a pizza party.

E ng age in a dialogue dialogue with reality reality Fuller’s process of making artifacts is a great model for making your ideas real . You can spend thousands of dollars in a lab by yourself

perfecting an idea, only to find out when you launch it there is a discrepancy between your level of excitement, and an indif ferent public. Get feedback early, based on the assessments you gain, you can redo the work and launch it again. Cycle through this process several times and the responses will empower you to see how your idea affects the user at a deeper level. You will see the objective reality of your work and its flaws, as reflected through the eyes of many people.

Most want to talk about the facts, or merely speculate about solutions. Instead, you must follow the route of Buckminster Fuller and go the opposite direction. Turn your speculations into their physical forms, artifacts. They will allow you to confirm or dis-confirm your theories, piercing reality into the process. image credit: bfi.org 

Lyden Foust is a Research & Innovation Associate at  at  The SEEK Company. A student practitioner of design strategy, 

Lyden is fueled by relentless sense of curiosity, and a desire to improve lives through innovation. His scrappy attitude has driven him to found and expand a successful business before graduating college & to curate the first TEDxXavierUniversity.

 

Building an Agile Organization – Implications for functional management  Posted on  on  A A pri l 14, 2013 2013 by  S  S hoaib Sh aukat  

As more and more companies adapt lean and agile practices and continue the  journey to become become more agile, the traditional functional functional structures structures become a bottleneck. As the agile spreads across the teams, so does the activities of the team members and their managers requires rethink. The command and control ways of controlling the teams will not work any more as agile needs more work participation from the team.

This creates some interesting problems for the traditional functional managers such as development manager or test manager. Many of the traditional responsibilities of these managers are no longer required. In my experience the following activities can help ease the pains of this transition.

1. Build community of practice for the functions (such as programming, QA, business analysis etc.) across multiple agile teams or across

lines of businesses if applicable. This allows lessons learned by the developers to spread to other testers in other teams. Functional managers can help coordinate or promote this activity by finding and encouraging the right people to run such activities. As this is more a social activity and need voluntary participation from team members, it can’t be organized in a traditional style. Lean Coffee type of meeting s can be more

effective in bringing people together.

2. Identify training needs across teams and provide courses, skill development programs to develop resources. This is an important part of

creating a knowledge culture based on continuous learning. Setting up brown bags on various topics top ics of interests for community will bring people on board and will help the teams to share and develop new knowledge.  

3. Take a strategic view of your teams and areas of responsibility. Look  Look across your product road maps and evaluate how well the current

skills and knowledge match future needs. If there are other teams who rely on your team then consider their needs in the plan ning process and take steps to fix gaps through hiring, training etc. 

4. Take steps to help team members take on more cross skill responsib responsibilities. ilities. Agile  Agile teams often see more benefits when team members

are willing to go beyond their key areas of expertise (e.g. Developers taking on Testing activities or BA activities). This is only possible when team have trust on each other and their managers. Managers should develop more tolerance to mistakes and failures as when new activities are tried there are more chances for something to go wrong. However this is an important part of learning process and achieve flexibility and agility. Traditional metrics of judging people’s performance in their areas of expertise should be abolished if you want to promote more tea m work.

 

5. Other managerial activities (such as performance reviews, hiring/firing) will need more collaboration with the teams. As  As you are likely to

work less directly with your employees on a day to day interaction, so it makes more sense to take input from your agile team members. Teams can determine the needs they are lacking in the best possible way as they are responsible for the project.

6. Bring more team members in the planning process as this creates a better buy in and also team members get more understanding of the

organizational needs. 

7. Take time to explain the organizational and project context to your team members. Consider  Consider them as your partner in driving the

company towards success. 

8. Last but not l east, hire people who have the right ingredientsto work in this kind of structure and who are not afraid of taking more

responsibilities.

If you have gone through this phase in your career of are currently going through, please share your ideas.

image credit: crateinccom crateinccom.com .com 

Shoaib Shaukat is a senior software engineer and business analyst working in commercial software development,

management and technology solutions for fortune 500 customers. He is passionate about technology, Internet, product development, and customer-stakeholder requirements.

 

Innovation Fails Because of Corporate Antibodies  Posted on  on  A A pri l 11, 2013 2013 by  S  S tefan Li ndeg aa aard  rd  

Here’s a big reason why open innovation efforts can fail:  they are often

killed by corporate antibodies resisting the changes brought by opening up to external partners. These antibodies can exist in both large and small companies. If you’re hearing statements such as these, corporate antibodies

may be at hard at work, resisting change:

• “We already tried that and couldn’t make it work.”   • “What we’re doing has worked fine for years; there is no need to change.”   • “Our current product is still profitable; I don’t see why we need to spend money on something new that might not even work out.”   • “We already explored that idea years ago but decided against it.”   • “If that were a good idea, we’d already have thought of it. After all, we are the experts on this.” (Said about an idea coming from the outside.)   • “Let me just play devil’s advocate here….”   • “Of course, I support innovation, but I just don’t think this is the right time to make a big change. The market isn’t ready.”  

People making such statements may truly believe that they have the company’s best interests at heart. Or they may be putting their personal interests ahead of company loyalty. Some people also become antibodies because they don’t feel their opinions ar e given enough weight. Such feelings can cause people to continuously take the negative side or play devil’s advocate. The phrase “I hate to bring this up, but…” comes

from them a lot, followed by a boatload of negativity.

This is not to say that anyone who questions the need for change or the direction that change is taking is being unnecessarily negative. Sound feedback is needed from many quarters for real innovation to occur. But what I’m talking about is not constructive criticism.  Rather, it is the

relentless negativity, foot dragging, and throwing up of needless roadblocks that pose a true threat to innovation ever becoming becomin g a reality.

Recognizing that corporate antibodies are likely to show up at some point in your innovation process and having strategies in place to deal with them should help you derail some of the people who want to impede change and maintain the status quo. Here are some potential solutions:

• Make people backers rather than blockers.  It’s never too early to start this. Your initial  stakeholder analysis and resulting communications strategy will mean that you’re being proactive rather than reactive. By communicating proactively, you can sometimes co -opt the antibodies into

the process in a way that satisfies their egos and makes them feel their ideas and authority are being appropriately recognized. You may discover that your proactive efforts weren’t enough, but you can continue to communicate to stakeholders that they can play a  valuable role in shaping the company’s future, includi ng their own destiny. Bring people together to facilitate knowledge sharing and the building of new relationships that broaden everyone’s perspectives. Keep people involved in the innovation process.  

 

• Stay below the radar. In some situations, the best cho ice is to stay below the radar as long as possible. Don’t become too interesting too

early. This will help you avoid people who want to own the idea or process, or who want to apply standard corporate processes to the project even though this can kill it. This, of course, is more applicable to large companies than to small ones, where everybody knows what’s going on and it’s hard to keep anything quiet.  

• Have frameworks and processes in place.  Many internal innovation debacles can partly be avoided by setting internal rules about how to

bring innovation projects forward. With a framework and process in place, it becomes easier to move projects forward without having them get hung up in destructive internal warfare.

• Provide high autonomy.  In larger organizations, having innovation councils with high autonomy or units with their own assigned budgets and

goals are other ways to get around the damage that can be done by corporate antibodies. Such structures help shelter new idea s against situations in which executives are not willing to spend their political capital in supporting innovation or when they believe the change will impac t their own career negatively.

image credit: word  cloud image f rom rom bigstock  

Stefan Lindegaard i  is s an author, speaker and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of ope n innovation, social media and

intrapreneurship.

 

Innovation versus Product Development  Posted on  on  A A pri l 12, 2013 2013 by  Wayne S immons and K ea eary ry C rawford  

Since the inception of the automobile industry, product features and functions were thought to be the primary pri mary determinants for customer buying decisions. Indeed, many automobile companies have built their corporate identities around specific product characteristics such as Volvo’s emphasis on safety features, GM’s and Chrysler’s focus on “American horsepower”, and Mercedes’ use of

luxurious materials in their vehicles. This product-centric thinking has driven entire marketing and branding campaigns and determined where most of that industry’s innovation resources are invested.  

Powerful market forces and changing customer behavior have challenged this dominant interpretation of innovation, changed the basis of competition and caught some automakers ill-equipped to respond. New factors such as the buyer’s experience at dealerships, the availability of maintenance  services, financing options and fuel economy are outside of the traditional

product development arena and now play a significant role in buying decisions. As a result, as innovation in the automobile industry has traditionally been associated with product development, customers are forcing automobile companies to rethink how they define innovation and where they invest their innovation resources.

Many companies equate innovation with creating and adding new product features and functions in a traditional product development life cycle. With this interpretation, the basis of competition and growth is assumed to be the volume, novelty and frequency of adding an ever-expanding list of product features and functions. When this narrow interpretation is dominant in a company, the vast majority of innovation investments are likely to flow to extend or add features and functions to existing products. As a result of this thinking, there is an elevat ed potential that companies may limit themselves to the relatively limited growth potential that can be extracted from existing products.

 

Re-conceptualizing Innovation  Re-conceptualizing

But this one clarification is just the beginning. In order for innovation programs and, ultimately companies, to deliver on i ts potential, they must elevate the conversation about innovation to the new language of business innovation. In conjunction with entrepreneurship and growth strategy, the six dimensions of business innovation – service, design, business model, value, customer and strategic innovation – innovation – offer multiple pathways for companies to drive growth and enterprise value creation. Business innovation accomplishes this by equipping companies to make traditional innovation more measurable and tangible  – key ingredients for sustainable business growth.

Companies should consider:

 

What product or service can we pair with our current offering that will set us apart?

 

What convenience can our offering provide customers that none of our competitors offer?

 

Can we construct compelling experiences around/beyond our offering for our customers?

 

What offering or guarantee can we deliver that no one else would dare?

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image credit: growthstrate growthstrategy.com gy.com 

Wayne Simmons is an accomplished executive, innovator, value creator, and entrepreneur and co-author of

Gr owt owthThinking: hThinking: B uild uilding ing th the e New Growth Growth E nt nterprise erprise . As CEO and Co-Founder of  of  The Growth Strategy Company,  Wayne leads the vision, strategy and growth of the company. He has worked for global advisory firms Ernst & Young, Deloitte Consulting, and has been a trusted advisor to C-level executives at Fortune 500 corporations, venture capital firms, and small and midsized companies. Wayne was trained in airborne reconnaissance for US Army Intelligence; and is an alumnus alu mnus and Fellow of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Keary Crawford is a results-driven executive leader with extensive experience in operations, M&A and finance for start-up, entrepreneurial and middle-market companies. As co-founder and COO of  of The Growth Strategy Company, she

rowthThinking: hThinking: B uild uilding ing the manages the strategic growth and vision, and day-to-day operations; and is co-author of  of G rowt New Growth Enterpris Enterpris e. Keary was trained in Behavioral and Social Sciences and is a Fellow and alumna of the Executive Development Development Program at the Wharton W harton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Innovation Litmus Test – Taking Ownership  Posted on  on  A A pri l 12, 2013 2013 by  Paul Hobcraft  

There is always a healthy debate on who “owns” innovation within any organization. Often it can

boil down to where the innovation concept is along the pipeline is or who has been designated with maneuvering or piloting the innovation through its different stages.

The reality of lasting ownership is much tougher; there are huge, often yawning gaps, in innovation accountability. The right answer should of course be everyone but making that statement on its own is a little bit of a cop-out, an easy answer to a complicated dilemma. So let me offer a connected way.

Working through the Executive Work Mat , jointly developed developed with our friends friends at  at  Ovo Innovation , this Work Mat was designed for many reasons but principally to gain leadership engagement within all things involving innovation.

One of its overarching principles was the quest to gain alignment from the top, at board level, through its interconnected structure and their strategic inputs so as to establish and make the critical connections all the way down and throughout the organization.

What we needed also was putting in place a fairly rigorous ‘ litmus test‘ to establish if this is achieving the positive r eaction eaction required and the

Work Mats intent.

These are my thoughts on this. 

To achieve the alignment of innovation to the organizations strategy goals and objectives is so critical to have the best chance to deliver the necessary impact needed; to gain growth and improvement on the existing position. We need to test for alignment, we need to see if innovation is being adopted, if innovation is cascading through the organization. Is it having a positive effect on how the organization and its people view innovation? How do we harness all the necessary efforts for a positive ‘reaction’?  

The Litmus Test required for Innovation. 

 

There are two handy definitions of a “litmus test” and why I think this can be applied nicely here in evaluating the value of  the Executive Work

Mat. 

1- A litmus test is used in chemistry to test and establish the acidity or alkalinity of the mixture- I think innovation does prompt plenty of ‘reactions’ so this works well.  

2- The second, a litmus test becomes a critical indicator of future success or failure, exactly what the Executive work Mat is attempting to influence in managing the innovation efforts.

The Seven Parts of the Litmus Test – a summary 

Translation points in value, impact and alignment –  – the value of the Executive Work Mat is to gain alignment, to promote value and achieve

a better positive impact from innovation.

The Leadership Commitment  – – how leaders chose to engage, to encourage and promote innovation activity is critical. They need to mentor,

coach, listen and respond to the concerns, opportunities and offer their contribution and judgment.

– In some recent research by Deloittes on what is required for successful collaboration they felt three conditions needed Peoples involvement  – to be in place. These I really resonated with, in where I feel any litmus test for innovation should focus upon when it comes to people:

 

Do they Belong: people collaborate on behalf of organizations they feel connected too.

 

Do they Believe: people collaborate when they commit to carrying out specific actions

 

How do they Behave: people collaborate when they share a common understanding of how things are done.

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Designed-In  – – the effectiveness of any innovation system is within its design, its processes and functioning. Here within the litmus test you are

looking far more at establishing, generating, generating, exploring, validating and using what is available and learning from it. It is i n the care and thoughtfulness of the design.

Engagement & Understan Understanding ding Outputs  – – the ability to communication, to find a

growing common language of innovation is vital to sustaining success. It boils down to the relating, the responding and the respecting of this. Identification and dialogue allows innovation to flow more freely. Respect generates growing trust. Trust is vital to innovation.

Risk & Rewards  – – Always the risk and fear working on innovation naturally comes up,

it consciously needs to be addressed. To assess as sess the exposure, the barriers, the balances and checks needed, the learning from success and failure needs openly exploring.

 

Finally, we always need Outcomes - Any effort or initiative has to have outcomes measured on its return of effort and cost involved. It is

focusing on effective implementation, implementation, on execution, on gaining a ROI and on achievements you can raise the awareness and value of innovation. Outcomes Outcomes become essential to drive and sustain innovation. People hunger for success, leaders also.

Adoption of the litmus test for delivering sustaining innovation

So for me, to achieve a lasting value out of the suggested suggested   Executive Work Mat you need to do these litmus tests and impact assessments to gauge the successful alignment effects. A clear connection between engagement, alignment and ownership through innovation’s g rowing

identification in its importance to be central in supporting the strategy within a business.

If you have not yet considered  considered the Executive Work Mat then I would simply encourage you to reach out and make that first connection, knowing a positive result from the ‘effect’ can make or break your organization. I’m certainly looking for more workouts in s upporting your

innovation fitness efforts. Interested?

image credit: madeinchina.com 

Paul Hobcraft runs  runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities.

 

Forge Your Front Line, Liberate Your Leaders  Posted on  on  A A pri l 12, 2013 2013 by  Matthew  Matthew E May  

What if you were able to grow your business confidently in the direction of your choosing? What if you could consistently provide the most innovative solutions to your customers’ problems? What if you could attract your industry’s best talent?  

What if you could command premium pricing of products and services that are heavily in demand and are far superior to any alternatives?

Fearless According to entrepreneur  entrepreneur Ray Attiyah, author of  of The Fearless Front Line, there’s only one way to achieve the entirety of this w ish list: liberate the leaders by empowering the front line.

Attiyah is the founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Definity Partners, a training, process and leadership improvement firm. In addition to founding Definity Partners, Attiyah owns 16 additional a dditional businesses including start-ups, manufacturer, training and e-commerce companies.

Buried in Daily Details 

Attiyah argues that all too often the front-line activities of a business are so unpredictable, unreliable and complicated, that business owners and leaders can’t seem to pull themselves away. But if you’re spending most of your time on the day -to-day operational aspects of the business, you’ve left a critical gap.  

“Time and energy are consumed by urgent but unimportant tasks,”  he  he writes. “Who’s creati ng ng the innovative and inspiring visions and strategies that are critical to growth?”  

The key is to liberate l iberate the top. But the precondition necessary to do that is “having a front line that can operate reliably, excellently, and independently day in and day out every day of every week of every year.”  

Attiyah maintains that business owners often have difficulty forgetting bad situations, and that inability to let go shakes t heir confidence in their front-line team and its activities. To compensate for their lack of confidence in the front line, leaders become conditioned to over-manage and under-lead.

Attiyah describes how to embolden the front line to take true ownership of essential day-to-day operations, which will liberate owners from getting mired in the distracting details. They can then capitalize on the momentum created by the fearless front line to determine what the organization needs to do to make (then keep) bold promises, place (then win) bold bets, and scout (then hire) bold people.

 

The Key to Inspiring the Troops 

So how does Attiyah suggest you develop this inspired, accountable and confident front line?

1. Raise the bar of excellence by investing in top performers and removing obstacles that frustrate them

2. Make meaningful changes quickly to bolster team confidence, enthusiasm and trust

3. Implement daily huddles to foster a positive “what went well” environment, communicate your standards of performance and crea te a simple

touch point for communicating the status of reactive improvements

Attiyah’s approach is based on a simple truth: As businesses mature, they create clutter. Superfluous processes are added to create a safety net for unreliable systems, and the organization can’t see clearly what it needs to do to be efficient and effective. Lead ers end up spending

most of their time in the weeds, which distracts them from their most important priority: growing their business.

Attiyah introduces a Run-Improve-Grow model, a continuously moving system that stimulates a culture of consistent relevancy, new growth and constant innovation. You can use the principles of Run-Improve-Grow to build a solid and simplified foundation.

The Run focuses on excellence and empowers the front line to take true ownership of their critical role.

Improve capitalizes on the momentum created by the fearless front line to liberate the organization’s leaders.  

With a fearless front line, simplified management system and new organizational attitude, a business is ready to launch boldly into the Grow, outlining what the business needs to pursue strategic innovations and new opportunities that will propel the company to great relevancy and profitable growth.

“Imagine a workplace that is free from the stress of managers and staff always finding problems but rarely acting on solutions,”  Attiyah writes.  “A workplace where teams establish and agree on clear standards of excellence, and a workplace where people are encouraged to  propose bold ideas and then make them realities? Run-Improve-Grow Run-Improve-Grow makes that workplace possible.”  

If you want your front-line workers to have an “I run this place!”  mindset  mindset that frees you up to concentrate on the bigger picture, The Fearless Front Line will provide a practical road map, and deserves a read.

Matthew E. May is the author of “IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing.” He is constantly searching for creative ideas and innovative solutions that are ‘elegant’ –  a unique and elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power

 

Don’t be Afraid of Trial-and-Error   Posted on  on A  A pri l 13, 2013  J org e Barba  2013 by  J

Why wait for the need to become obvious? Yes, why wait for it? If you are an established company, you have a set of challenges that you need to wrestle with on a daily basis. Growth, is one. Either Eith er by strengthening the existing value proposition of your current business, or by creating something entirely new.

With that said, to see what isn’t there, ask yourself a pair of

questions: 

 

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What is the true value that customers get from my products or services?

 

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In what other ways could that value be delivered?

If you can answer these questions clearly, then you can see a world of possibilities. Anticipating the needs of your customers isn’t a walk in the park. I have a client that is sitting on a gold mine of insights that could potentially take them into another business, or simply evolve their existing business. These types of opportunities are not obvious when you are engaged in the everyday routine of the job. j ob. Outsiders, in this case it was us, can help you ask the unquestionable and see anew.

Anyway, when you do identify other ways to deliver value, two things can happen: 

1.   Your existing value proposition can be strengthened 1. 2.  You create another product or service that takes advantage of this opportunity 2. 

Both steps need different planning. 

If you are are working in a well established company, you are sitting on a mountain of unidentified insights. The pull of the daily routine is too strong for you to re-examine the company and see what’s in plain sight. It is best you don’t wait for Tinkerbell to come and drop Pixie dust on you to start flying and see the bigger picture.

These insights can only be uncovered by either perceiving them, or by probing for them. To probe, you have to spend time with your customers and  pay attention to what they say and do. and

You can’t assume that customers are completel y satisfied, or that their existing needs will stay the same. You have to probe, and then probe

some more to get a feel for what could happen. This means you have to experiment constantly with complete disregard for what customers like right now. Facebook and Google do a lot of this. Their appetite for fo r experimentation is what keeps them pushing to either strengthen and extend their core, or to replace it.

 

With that said, take into account that by trying things, you might actually piss off your customers. But, understand, what your customers will like tomorrow might not be the same as what you give them today. They will either evolve with you or without with out you. We all know how the latter looks like.

Bottom line: There is no innovation without experimentation. experimentation. Whether you like it or not, you have to play a game of trial -and-error to develop

new value. There is  is no way around it. That includes experimenting with your value proposition itself. This is how you develop evolutionary advantage.

Jorge Barba is an Innovation Insurgent and is the Creative Strategist at Blu Maya, a San Diego based Digital Marketing Firm that helps organizations build their online business with strategy development for new products and services. He’s also the

author of the innovation blog  blog Game Changer. And lastly, you can follow him on Twitter  Twitter  @jorgebarba . 

 

Own the Behavior   Posted on  on  A A pri l 13, 2013 2013 by  Mik  Mik e Shi puls ki  

The system is big and complex and its output is outside your control. Trying to control these outputs is a depressing proposition, yet we’re routinely judged (and judge ourselves) on outputs. I think it’s better to

focus on system inputs, specifically your inputs to the system.

When the system responds with outputs diff erent than desired, don’t get upset. It’s nothing personal. The system is just doing its job. It digests a

smorgasbord of inputs from many agents just like you and does what it does. Certainly it’s alive, but it doesn’t know you. And certainly it doesn’t

respond differently because you’re the one providing input. The system doesn’t take its output personally, and neither should you.  

When the system’s output is not helpful, instead of feeling badly about yourself, shift your focus from system output to the input you provide it. (Remember, that’s all you have control over.) Did you do what you said you’d do? Were you generous? We’re you thoughtful? We’ re you insightful? Did you give it your all or did you hold back? If you’re happy with the answers you should feel happy with yourself. Your input, your behavior, was just as it was supposed to be. Now is a good time to fall back on the insightful grade school mantra, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”  

If your input was not what you wanted, then it’s  time to look inside and ask yourself why. At times like these it’s easy to blame others and

outside factors for our behavior. But at times like these we must own the input, we must own the behavior. Now, owning the be havior doesn’t mean we’ll behave the same way going forward, it just means we own it. In order to improve our future inputs we’ve got to understand why we

behaved as we did, and the first step to better future inputs is owning our past behavior.

Now, replace “system” with “person”, and the arg ument is the same. You are responsible for your input to the person, and they are responsible for their output (their response). When someone’s output is nonlinear and offensive, you’re not responsible for it, they are.  Were you kind?

 

Thoughtful? Insightful? If yes, you get what you get, and you don’t get upset. But what if you weren’t? Shouldn’t you feel responsible for their response? In a word, no. You should feel badly about your input i nput – your behavior – and you should apologize. But their output is about them. They, like the system, responded the way they chose. If you want to be critical, be critical of your behavior. Look deeply at why you behaved as you did, and decide how you want to change it. Taking responsibility for their response gets in the way of taking responsibility for your behavior.

With complex systems, by definition it’s impossible to predict their output. (That’s why they’re called complex.) And the onl y way to understand

them is to perturb them with your input and look for patterns in their responses. What that means is your inputs are well intended and ill informed. This is an especially challenging situation for those of us that have been conditioned (or born with the condition) to mis-take responsibility for system outputs. Taking responsibility for unpredictable system outputs is guaranteed frustration and loss of self-esteem. And it’s guaranteed to reduce the quality of your input over time.  

When working with new systems in new ways, it’s especially important to take responsibility f or your inputs at the expense e xpense of taking

responsibility for unknowable system outputs. With innovation, innovation, we must spend a little and learn a lot. We must figure out how to perturb the system with our inputs and intelligently sift its outputs for patterns of understanding. The only way to do it is to fearlessly take responsibility for our inputs and fearless let the system take responsibility for its output.

We must courageously engineer engineer and own our behavioral plan of attack, and modify it as we learn. And we m ust learn to let the system be responsible for its own behavior.

Mike Shipulski brings together people, culture, and tools to change engineering behavior. He writes daily on Twitter as @MikeShipulski and weekly on his blog  blog Shipulski On Design. 

 

Dealing with Fast Change in the Context of Innovation   Posted on  on  A A pri l 15, 2013 2013 by  S  S tefan Li ndeg aa aard  rd  

Corporate innovation teams need to be better prepared to deal with the fast pace of change in business and thus also in their work with innovation.

I wonder how (or if) companies develop strategies for dealing with this. I did not find much on this topic so here you get some early ideas on how such a strategy could look like. Your input is highly appreciated!

First, they can consider this sequel of steps: 

Prepare:  Here the goal is to understand impact of changes as early

as possible. You can develop a process to identify trends / changes with potential impact on innovation efforts and you can develop ways to measure magnitude and pace of these trends/changes. Some are foreseeable to some degree, whereas others come with less warning. The latter is of course more difficult to deal with, but any kind of preparation still helps.

You could also prepare by working with scenarios based on the above input. Once this is in place, it makes sense to make your innovation strategy more flexible.

Embrace:  A well-prepared team has different kinds of response options in place and they will now activate these accordingly to the

assessment of the trends and changes that are now impacting their innovation efforts.

Adapt:  Sometimes you miss the boat and now, you need to adapt fast in order to catch up. This can draw upon t he work made in the response

options although you have to factor in that you are no longer ahead of the change, but behind it.

 

Learn: As with failure, you need to capture the learnings of the changes in order to be better prepare for the next step…  

Drive: If you can get a process like this to work, you have a better change of driving changes within your industry.

As corporate innovation teams reflect on changes in this sequel, they should also consider that change happens at many differ ent levels including products, technologies, services, processes, markets, internal organization, external ecosystems and government regulation.

Factors Affecting Responses to Change 

One of my inspirational sources for this post was an article, article,   Dealing with Change: Some Theory and Strategies, which included this list of factors affecting personal and/or organizational responses to change:

Degree of Choice About the Change: Imposed changes tend to be particularly difficult because you feel powerless from the outset, even if

you happen to agree with the change. It is hard to generate a sense of ownership over a change which is imposed. Similarly, a black and white choice is more difficult to own, than one where you have the opportunity to select from a range of options (or generate your own ideas).

Compatibility of the Change: How does the proposed change relate to your life/organisational context  – your values, beliefs, lifestyle,

preferences or habits? The further you are required to move away from your ideology or comfort zone, the more difficult it is to respond positively to change.

Magnitude of the Change: Will it continue to impact on your life? If not, you might be able to tolerate an unpopular change more readily. Is it a

big or small change? A small uncomfortable change is easier to make than a big one. The size and duration of the process of change, too, can affect your attitude to change. How much time and effort will be taken, firstly, in making a decision and, secondly, in implementing it?

Ability to Undertake the Change: Do you know exactly what change is being asked for? Do you have the competencies (skills, knowledge,

attitudes and values) to adopt the change? Have you experienced a similar or related situation before? Are you aware of precedents elsewhere? Are there others who might be able to resource you in this process? Clearly, it’s impossible to implement a change  unless you

understand what is required, and have the ability to do it!

 

Awareness of the Impact of the Change: Have you thought through the overall consequences of this change occurring? Sometimes, fear of

the unknown (the possible impact of the change) is unnecessarily overwhelming. overwhelming. On the other oth er hand, without forethought, an apparently simple change can have serious implications which you didn’t plan for. Processing the possible implications of the change in a balan ced way (looking

equally at positives and negatives) can help overcome false barriers ba rriers or challenge naive acceptance.

Number of Dimensions to the Change: Singular/isolated goals are easier to manage than multi-faceted ones which impact across a range of

areas in your life/work.

Level of Control/Influence over the Change: This can apply to either the process of change or its outcomes. Personal change is generally

easier to handle than structural change, because you are likely to have more power (or, at least, your sense of power seems m ore tangible). There are many aspects of power  – control, influence, personal, cultural, structural, formal, informal, internal, external …  

The degree of control or influence you have may vary in the decision making and implementation phases of the change. Information about who owns what may be clear/open, or confused/hidde confused/hidden. n. If you are dissatisfied with your level of power in one or more of these areas, it is likely to affect your willingness to change.

Let me know if you can share insights and/or examples on how companies prepare for changes in i n the context of their innovation process.

imag e from bigstock   image credit:  credit: intersection imag

Stefan Lindegaard is an author, speaker and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, social media and

intrapreneurship.

 

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