Innovation Made Easy

Innovation is not something that can be mandated to succeed like a quota system, but rather it needs to be nourished with collaboration, motivation, and giving people the organizational freedom to try new things.

While many organizations have played with the idea of giving employees “tinkering time”–from a few hours a week to 20% of their time–to explore their creativity and work on new ideas, according to the Wall Street Journal (18 January 2013), “it rarely works” or pays off.

The reason–most employees have “enough to do already” and most tinkerers are free thinkers and amateur experimenters–and “they aren’t the kinds of employees most big companies like adding to the payroll in the first place.”

The WSJ suggests “better ways to spark innovation” through:

– External partnerships that can “inject the verve of a promising startup into a big company.”

– Public-private partnerships that can leverage government-funded research and development.

– Providing a profit motive for tinkerers to be successful by allowing them “to profit more from their innovations.” For example, tinkerers may “own the rights to anything they develop,” while the company retains “the right of first refusal to invest” in it.

Harvard Business Review (15 January 2013) has a compact guide on “Nine Rules for Stifling Innovation” by Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

These are the absolute don’ts when it comes to innovation:

1) “Be suspicious” of–or I would say competitive with–“any new idea from below”; everyone in the organization can have good ideas, not just the wise owls at the top!

2) “Invoke history”–such as we tried that already and it didn’t work or do you think you’re the first person to think of that? Just because something didn’t work previously under one set of circumstances, doesn’t mean the idea is doomed forever–timing may be everything.

3) “Keep people really busy”–I would call that “make work”–where we treat people so that if they have time and effort to question the status quo, then they have too much free time on their hands. Or as was written by the Nazis on the sign at the entrance to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp: “Arbeit Macht Frei”–[brutal harsh enslaving] work will set you free.

4)  “Encourage cut-throat competition”–organizational innovation is not about critiquing others to death or creating win-lose scenarios among your staff, but rather about sharing ideas, refining them, and collaborating to make something great from the combined talents and skills of the team.

5) “Stress predictability”–innovation while encouraged with best practices is not something you predict like the weather, but rather is based on trial and error–lot’s of effort–patience, and even a measure of good luck.

6) “Confine discussion…to a small circle of trusted advisors”–I would say that strategy is top-down and bottom-up–everyone can provide valuable input. Almost like agile development, strategy gets refined as more information becomes available.

7) “Punish failures”–while we generally celebrate success (and not failure), we must still give people an opportunity to fail and learn. That doesn’t mean incompetence or laziness is given a free pass, but rather that hard work based on good common sense is acknowledged and rewarded.

8) “Blame problems”–while the blame game can just make heads spin or fall, it is far better to hold people accountable in a fair and unbiased way and coach, counsel, mentor, and train professional learning and growth.

9) Be arrogant–we all started somewhere–I served frozen yogurt in a health food store as a teen…we all go through the cycle of life–and everyone has their time.

I would add a tenth, don’t…

10) Mistreat your greatest asset, your people–Treat people, as you would want to be treated: listen, at least, twice as much as you speak, empathize with others, and try to treat people ethically and with heart.

So can innovation really be made easy?

It’s never easy to do something new, we all have to crawl before we can walk–but we can foster an organizational environment that promotes innovation, sharing, collaboration, transparency, and teamwork rather than one based on fear, bullying, intimidation, and punishment. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal with attribution of the beautiful “Dream” art to Romero Britto)

>Transformation That Can Succeed

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Many organizations seek transformation. They are mired in paper even though we as a society have long moved to a digital age. They are organized around silos, despite the revelation that enterprise can function more effectively as one. They are overcome by day-to-day operational issues and are busy fighting fires, instead of focused on long-term strategy and execution. These are just some of the dysfunctions organizations seek to transform from.

But many transformations fail and they do so big time, leaving dispirited employees, disgruntled managers saying I told you so, and organizations hobbled in outmoded processes and legacy technologies, with the rest of the world seemingly passing them by. If they do nothing, they risk becoming obsolete, irrelevant, and a mere artifact of history.

Why do so many transformations fail and how can we help to convert these failures to successes is the topic of a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article titled “Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don’t Lose Your Nerve)” by Robert H. Miles in January-February 2010.

Here are some of the major hurdles and what we need to do to overcome them:

· Self Interest (or the “I” factor): Those who control the most resources or institutional assets tend to monopolize discussions, trump new ideas, and strong-arm decision-making, thereby reinforcing the status quo” and the security of their own corporate kingdom. I personally think this is one of the most difficult challenges to organizational change, because you have managers (i.e. they are not genuine leaders!) whose self-interest trumps organizational progress. The author calls for compelling all executives to confront reality and work together, but this isn’t a prescriptive answer, rather it is more of a wish. In my opinion, the mandate for change must come from the very top and everyone needs to be held accountable for genuinely helping the organization changes succeed.

· Organizational capacity to change—“In most cases, the day-to-day management process is already operating at full capacity…there isn’t room within the established systems to plan and launch a transformation.” The author calls for a parallel launch with small visible victories. While, small victories are good, this doesn’t really address how the organization can carve out the time, resources and commitment in the face of already stressed people, processes, and systems. I believe that you must make the investment distinct from your regular operations (this is not a collateral duty!) and form a high-level transformation office that reports to the senior executive. The transformation office is elevated from the organizational silos and works horizontally to make change happen. This means that traditional organization boundaries become transparent for process improvement and technology enablement. However, this cannot be a proverbial, ivory tower effort, but it must be well thought out, focused, and inclusive. The transformation office must engage all stakeholders across the organization in visioning, planning, and executing change initiatives.

· Change gridlock—“Workers capacity to execute will become a choke point if the programs are not prioritized and sequenced.” The author calls for limiting change initiatives to 3 or 4. This creates organizational focus. While I agree that you do not want to overwhelm the organization with too much change too fast, I find this somewhat at odds with the authors notion of “launches must be bold and rapid to succeed.” In my mind, it is not the launches that must be bold and rapid, but rather the goals that must be bold and the transformation should be allowed to proceed in a logical sequenced phases so that the organization can achieve learning, proficiency, and sustainability. Last thing we want to do is build a house of cards. At the same time, I don’t believe there is a magic number of initiatives, but rather that this is dependent on the resources available, the size and complexity of the change initiatives, and the organizational readiness and capacity for change.

· Sustaining transformation—“The more intensive and engaging the transformation launch, the harder it is to sustain the heightened levels of energy, focus, and performance.” The author recommends a “launch redux” to continue the transformation. I’m not convinced you need an annual or periodic revival of the initiative, but rather I believe that’s what’s called for is the following: leadership continuity and commitment, the continued development and nurturing of a shared vision of what transformation means, and ongoing performance management and measurement to see the change through. I believe that people will support the change process if they can see that it is purposeful, reasonable, inclusive, and that the commitment is real and sustained.

The truth is that no major and meaningful change in our personal or organizational life is short or easy. If it were fast and easy, it probably wouldn’t be so darn pivotal to our future.

Transformation is a risky, but necessary endeavor. We should not be afraid to make mistakes and learn from these. The greatest change and growth comes from the striving itself. As others have noted, it is the journey—to the destination—that is truly critical.