dispatches from the new world of work

Innovate or Die: The Innovation110
A Menu of [Essential] Innovation Tactics
Part Three: Tactic #43 through #72

Celebration!

43. Celebrate! Innovative organizations are places where people enjoy their peers' work, good tries, good screw-ups, milestones reached, etc. Celebrating these events, large and small and very small, is a fullscale part of the "innovation culture."

44. Celebrate failures. This peculiar form of celebration deserves particular mention. "Fast failure" is innovation's bedrock. Hence the encouragement thereof, rather than the stigmatization, is of paramount importance. Hence, the hearty celebration of the quick try run amok is of strategic importance.

R&D, Ubiquity of.
"Staff Department" R&D Paramount.

45. R&D spending/Overall. This is a "boring" staple of innovation, but obviously of great importance. Aggressiveness is called for. In addition to the firm itself, having, say, a set of vendors, most or all of whom are top-quartile in R&D spending in their industry, is also of great importance.

46. R&D/Big Co, Small Co. Aggressive R&D is not just the provenance of the big company. In fact, it is more important to the 2-person Professional Services Firm than the lumbering giant—talk about "Innovate or die"!

47. R&D spending/Small projects. Make sure the R&D portfolio includes many one-off, short-term projects. (Quite often, these little fellas grow to become the biggest of the big.)

48. R&D/100% Staff Departments. Aggressive R&D is as important in Finance and Purchasing as in IT or New Product Development!!!

49. R&D/Systems! Innovative systems are as important as innovative products (witness Dell's 2-decade systems-driven run, which changed the world). Manage the hell out of this!

50. R&D/Practice "Nudgery." Small system nudges can cause grand behavior changes. Become a "nudge aficionado." Teach Nudgery.

51. "R&D" Play Money/Ubiquitous. The ability for virtually anyone to get their hands on a few bucks (and a mentor) to play around (right term) with a new idea is essential.

52. Venture Funds/All levels. This can run to billions of $$ at Intel to much smaller sums, but the idea is casting a wide, speculative net.

53. University support. Research universities are among America's most vital competitive advantages, and are likely to be so for decades. Associations, large and small, with universities are an important part of the innovative enterprise.

54. "Sell-by" date, consideration of. Peddling old stalwart parts of enterprises when they become commoditized may help free the spirit of the enterprise to move toward a new playing field. (On the other hand, oldie goldies can surprisingly often become hotbeds of new innovation under inspired leadership.)

55. R&D/good times and bad times. R&D may have to take its lumps in tough times like the present. But beware of cutting too much muscle. Moreover, bad times can be the perfect time to get the jump on competitors with innovations if at all possible. Tough times are also ideal for little R&D projects that might just grow legs.

The Essential Role of Lead Customers.
Loving Angry Customers.

56. Lead customer portfolio. Innovation is not natural in the best of circumstances. Stasis is comfortable. Hence, we must force ourselves into uncomfortable circumstances. (I accept speeches to groups where I have no expertise.) Customers who are far from our norm are frontline change agents. We must formally create a portfolio of lead customers—and then commit to joint product development and connection in general. Again, this must be managed and not left to chance.

57. Customers on all teams. Customers must pervade our electronic and physical halls. They must especially be part of all innovation teams.

58. New network forms. Constantly experiment with new forms of networking with customers of all sizes and shapes.

59. Pissed-off Customers Association. No group is more valuable than pissed off customers!! (Even, or especially, irrationally pissed off customers.) Make them part of the family. Shower them with love. Reward them for their contributions. Bring then into electronic and physical networks.

XFX/Cross-Functional Excellence.
No Option.

60. XF Obsession. Implemented innovations generally (100% of the time?) include and are significantly shaped by contributions from all departments. Lousy cross-functional (XF) communication-cooperation-synergy-esprit is often Problem #1 in enterprises of all sizes. Thus a culture of innovation is dependent on constant-strategic-executive attention to XF effectiveness.

61. XF Innovators. The heart of an innovation that goes in a wonderfully unpredicted direction is very likely to have come from a contribution by a "secondary"-to-the-project functional expert.

62. XF Programs. Formalize numerous programs and nudges, small more important than large, to specifically and measurably attack-enhance-vivify XF effectiveness.

63. XF Friendships (measurement thereof). It is this simple: Friendships across boundaries are the best lubricant there is. Foster them! Formally!

64. XF-centrism in evaluations. Repeated XF obfuscation is a firing offense. XFX (cross-functional excellence) is cause for early promotion, hefty bonuses, etc. This part of the evaluation must have sharp teeth.

65. XF/All teams. Foster cooperative XF involvement in activities of all sizes and shapes by all sorts of folks, even, or especially, when the need is not obvious.

66. XF assignment as requisite career step. Promotion to relatively senior positions or above is dependent on at least one full XF assignment—e.g., a year or so tour of duty.

67. XF/Finance. Get as many managers as possible to spend non-trivial time in finance, to develop a "business" perspective on their work—this is especially important regarding innovation activities.

Project Team Primacy.
Project Managers Rule.

68. Project team as basic organizational unit. The largely independent project team, the coherent entity of 2, 21, or 212, is the basic building block of the innovating enterprise. This comes as no surprise, but must be underscored anyway. Innovation work is rarely accomplished via a routine grouping that follows the conventional org chart and involves members from various functions who remain under the jurisdiction of their traditional bosses. Obvious or not, innovating organizations are collections of energized project teams—with functional affiliations secondary.

69. The excellent project manager is the Superstar of the innovation-centric enterprise. These are the small numbers of superstars who must be retained at almost any cost. And they do stand out as superstars.

70. The development and care and feeding of your cadre of project managers is human resources Job #1. Effective project management is a peculiar discipline requiring a raft of skills, from the very hard to the very soft. Understanding the discipline and carefully developing project management skills is paramount to creating and maintaining a culture of innovation.

71. Project manager cadre diversity is imperative. Period.

72. Entire talent pool available to project managers. Creating a process, preferably Web-driven, for project managers to cobble teams together for the long haul or for a 48-hour project is essential. But remember to take into account the "soft stuff," and not over-mechanize the process.

Tom Peters posted this on 01/07/09.

Comments

Tom,

Your comments about the need for XFX seem to tie in beautifully with a wonderful article on Culture and Change in Issue 53 Winter 2008 of strategy+business magazine. An excellent piece of research by Stratford Sherman and Marisa Faccio investigates what we do, and what we should do, with change agents (innovators) in our companies.

Blue skies,

Lark

Posted by Lark at January 7, 2009 5:49 PM

"Pissed-off Customers Association. No group is more valuable than pissed off customers!! (Even, or especially, irrationally pissed off customers.) Make them part of the family. Shower them with love. Reward them for their contributions. Bring then into electronic and physical networks."

I love this. There is a beautiful acknowledgment here that as business owners we are not perfect in practice; there is the acknowledgment that we hear the voice of our customers. There is also a sense of valuing them enough to bring them lovingly and patiently along.

Who's doing this en masse today? I suspect small businesses are more apt and agile for such focus. Is it being done effectively in large corporations? For this kind of focus in larger companies a kind of cultural pervasive leadership that begins internally from the top seems essential. Charity begins at home and is demonstrated by parents first.

As a corporate facilitator for Fortune 500 companies for a number of years, I facilitated courses in customer service and assisted in the design of training material. This kind of approach to customer service, one that stem out of love and humility, would have been useful. Practicing love and humility is not only good for humanity; it's good for business too.

Posted by Judith Ellis at January 8, 2009 3:22 AM

Re 67,
And vice versa, if anything even more importantly. The front line is where cost gets translated into value, and finance people need to see that for themselves if they are to really understand the reality behind the numbers.

Posted by Rob at January 8, 2009 4:48 AM

Who's doing this en masse today? I suspect small businesses are more apt and agile for such focus.

Very interesting question Judith. I work for a large software company (global player) and my new role is looking exactly at this problem for Tech support in Europe.

Small companies do this well-often based on a few good individuals and some positive culture. That simply does not work in a large org - the question I am grappling with is how do you build structure and process around this without losing the individual touch.

Posted by PaulH at January 8, 2009 7:15 AM

PaulH - Is it simply a matter of consistent leadership that outlines many of the points in TP's and Raj's lists which require all hands on deck? Does this sound too simplistic and naive? But why else create such lists if not for implementation on any scale? The lists are quite actionable. I have begun to implement a few points already in my small business and got a great confirmation today. But then again my business is small, though in good shape.

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But a larger corporatation can benefit too. Can not a larger structure be built upon these lists and taught with a single corporate voice from department to department, site to site, and nation to nation? (It's a voice that evolves through implementation and not only spoken or set corporate rules and values.) People are the same even though cultures vary. I loved facilitation for its people impact on corporate culture from company to company. But during lean times training is usually the first thing to go.

Posted by Judith Ellis at January 8, 2009 1:35 PM

Judith your are absolutely right at one level - in terms of individuals and their interactions with individuals.

One of the challenges I have (and I think this is a huge opportunity area for Customer relationship Gurus) is that much of the thinking or literature I have read on great customer service deals with single consumers - many examples look at hotels, restaurants or car dealerships. The world I work in has corporate customers and we do (or try to do) global deals. The relationship complexity is exponential.

Process stuff is fairly straightforward - but the emotional relationship stuff is very difficult - part of the answer is clear branding but questions such as how strong is our relationship with customer X is very difficult to answer when you have hundreds or thousands of engagament points world wide for one customer. It's wierd at one level the answer is simplicity (Trevor cheers) and at another it's horribly complicated (Trevor not cheering!)

Posted by PaulH at January 9, 2009 3:34 AM

Hi Paul – I see the complexity of your challenge and I never deny complexity. (I do say complexity is merely the sum of simple parts). I can only suggest the answer to the dilemma is about the culture that is set from the top. The leadership must set the tone. However big the organisation, however many connections there are in however many countries of the world, if the culture is set and known explicitly from the top then the customer experience should be similar. I presume it’s still the same that a Big Mac tastes the same in Sydney, Calcutta, New York or London. That is because of consistency, sticking to basics, and having an explicit strategy that creates the culture. Most of all I suggest it is about the vision from the top of the organisation. I recognise, admit and concede your challenge is not simple. If there is clarity at the top then everyone knows the culture and customers recognise and value the organisation for it.

Rob - ‘The front line is where cost gets translated into value’ – I love that and agree with you 100% thank you for your wise words!

Posted by Trevor Gay at January 9, 2009 9:20 AM

The distinction here I don't quite get. Perhaps my head is thick this morning. Whether we're talking internal or external customers, people are the same. This we can count on.

If we are empathetic to each other, to our strengths, weaknesses, and ambitions, while being aware of Maslow’s hierarchy, with a sense of moving a project forward as the goal, could this make the difference?
This people stuff becomes less complicated in this light. Too simple?

It seems like a matter of compromise and cultivating a culture of respect, love, excellence, idealism, openness, and process with internal and external customers where reliance on innovation, be it products or relations, matter most.

Perhaps getting us all at this point in a large company is more challenging. But the rewards may be sweeter. Best, PaulH.

Posted by Judith Ellis at January 9, 2009 9:39 AM

'cultivating a culture of respect, love, excellence, idealism, openness, and process with internal and external customers'

Brilliant Judith - says it all in 16 words. Patrick will be impressed :-) Actually, it says it all about ANY aspect of management, business and leadership. Maybe I will pinch your words and post them on my Blog if you don't mind.

Posted by Trevor Gay at January 9, 2009 10:23 AM

Pinch and post away, Trevor! What's mine here is yours. Oh, to impress Patrick-this would be a delight. :-)

Posted by Judith Ellis at January 9, 2009 11:26 AM

I like the thoughts about Project Managers and Project Management in general. The superstar thing is spot-on.

#68 is very interesting, following methodologies and adhering to (usually restrictive) rules kills innovation. But the thing is you need to have full dedication from the project team, otherwise, it might be just giving them enough rope to hang themselves.

Posted by PM Hut at January 17, 2009 10:52 AM