I often talk with innovation leaders who believe their company does well on innovation. This contrast what the below people further down the org chart says.
Are leaders generally on the same page as their employees or do they tend to exaggerate the state of the organizational innovation capabilities?
What is your take on this?
I am giving a talk on networking and relationship building tonight. I have given many talks and workshops on this topic and I have learned that the best way to help people become better at networking is to create something close to a coaching sessions. I prefer getting into real issues trying to guide a volunteer with an issue on the spot. The volunteer gets a free coaching session and the other participants learn by listening and helping out.
More often than not, people have the same issues on networking. This evolves around career development and getting things done. The career stuff is more long-term and strategic whereas the latter is much more operational driven.
It will be fun tonight where I will get into parts of my latest article — see below and this link: Are You Ready for the Next Generation of Innovation?
Relationship building
As we move towards open innovation, companies have to be able to identify and establish partnerships that complement their own business capabilities. This requires people who are experts at networking and building relationships.
Rob Cross, an associate professor in University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, has identified three networking types that you should pay attention to within an organization: central connectors, brokers, and peripheral people1.
Central connectors are those people with the highest number of direct connections. They can be formal leaders–or political players trying to be leaders–who everyone seeks out either because they make things happen, or because they have made themselves bottlenecks.
The latter can become a major problem with regards to innovation where you often need a dynamic flow. Some experts are also central connectors and this could lead to an overuse of these people as everyone goes to them with questions. Sometimes you need to protect these experts.
Brokers connect people across boundaries, such as functions, skills, geography, hierarchy, ethnicity, and gender. They have ground-level credibility and acknowledged expertise in the eyes of their peers, which makes them more likely to be sought out and listened to than a designated expert or leader who might not be influential in the network.
According to Cross, brokers often sit in “tipping point” positions and so diffuse information faster than leaders and central connectors. As such, brokers have the leverage ability to drive change, diffusion or innovation and they can also act in key liaison or cross-process roles.
You should also be aware of peripheral people who could be new people, experts, sales people, poor performers or cultural misfits. They sit on the edge of the network, and Cross has learned that typically 30 to 40 percent of peripheral people are trying to get better connected but have run into obstacles. These people reflect untapped expertise and are substantial flight risks.
Once you gain a better understanding of these networking types, you should ask yourself what type you are and how this impacts your future goals and your ability to work with open innovation projects. Working with innovation, you have to deal with all three networking types and you should also try to understand how to work best with the different types. This is especially important if you are a manager or leader.
Besides this introduction to networking types, let’s look at some ways of maximizing the effectiveness of your networking efforts:
• Only network if you have a purpose: I strongly encourage you not to listen to the people who say you should network with everyone within sight so as to not risk losing any opportunities. You are already busy and time is the most precious thing you have, so do not spend time on activities that do not serve a higher meaning.
• Leverage the power of “six degrees of separation” to reach anyone in the world: This refers to the idea that if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is an average of six “steps” away from each person on Earth. Think of someone who could really influence the success of your innovation work and see how many steps it would take you to connect with that person. You’ll often be surprised that you don’t even need six steps; it can often be done in just three or four connections.
• Use virtual tools: A growing number of online tools and services make networking so much easier. I use LinkedIn, the largest online business networking site, which is great for managing my network. The discussion features of the LinkedIn groups tool has also proven to be a powerful and simple way for me to engage people from across the world in productive discussion about my areas of interest. You can do the same.
• Understand informal versus formal network leadership: In an open innovation eco-system, you need to know the influencers who are not on the formal organization chart. They are the people who hold disproportionate influence on other people. Get to know the powers behind the throne.
• Reason, ask, and tell: Prepare reasons for getting in touch with other people. This goes both ways. Once an interaction such as a brief encounter or a meeting is over you should always remember to ask people how you can help them and let these people know of any ways they might be able to help you. Nothing happens if you do not ask.
• Speak-write-meet: You can use several means to build your personal brand which again impacts the kind of relationships you can build. Some people are great speakers, others write very well, while others are great with people. Find your strength and build on that. You should also consider how your team can cover all these aspects of what could be called team branding.
Check out this interview with the CEO of IDEO, Tim Brown.
IDEO - www.ideo.om - is an innovation machine; a designer of products, services, and experiences ranging from Apple’s first mass-market computer mouse to aspects of Prada’s store in New York City to the patient-care delivery model at SSM DePaul Health Center, in St. Louis, Missouri.
The interview is by McKinsey. The combination of IDEO and McKinsey can’t be wrong and it is not. The article is short article but it definitely has some good points to think about. Check out this link: Lessons from innovation’s front lines: An interview with IDEO’s CEO
Registration is required.
Ten Types of Innovation by Doblin - www.doblin.com
The way business takes place in most companies is that you have people trained at the skills or functions they are working with such as R&D, production, sales/marketing, and finance. Of course, you have cross-function teams, but generally you try to excel in one area.
Not long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with Paul Campbell, who is a true intrapreneur at Hewlett-Packard. Paul is working on his fifth internal startup and is now a Vice-President in HP’s Voodoo Gaming PC business. We talked about what characterizes intrapreneurs, and Paul said that an intrapreneur must have the ability to see and pursue possibilities by piecing together innovations across three or more business functions simultaneously. Paul emphasized that successful intrapreneurship requires this level of innovation to differentiate it from standard business growth initiatives. This contrasts sharply with most people who are only trained to do one thing at the time. But in order to be an intrapreneur, you need to think like a composer, not a musician.
Not only do you have to think and work across business functions, you also have to innovate across the key areas of business when you move from ideas and research to revenue. Doblin has made some groundbreaking research showing that 96 percent of all innovations fail to meet their targets – not necessarily because companies perform poorly at the core product or service innovation, but more often than not because companies fail to follow through with innovation in other key areas of their business. Businesses must be able to master all types of innovation – everything from business model innovation to innovation of products, processes, and services. This “whole picture” approach is important in delivering successful innovation, and is another key part of collaboration.
On a more personal level, consider whether or not you are a “T-shape.” Innovation consultancy IDEO uses this term to describe people who are more likely to thrive with innovation. You should bring superior in-depth knowledge as an engineer, sales person or something else to the table. That is the vertical part of the T. But you should also have the breadth and empathy – the horizontal part of the T – to understand and appreciate the skills that other people bring to the table as you work as a team to become successful with your innovation projects.
As a T-shaped person, you accept that you don’t know everything and have the courage to seek help and advice from others. Gain a broader perspective by learning from those whose experience and views differ from yours.
Article: Strategy & Innovation: Are You Ready for the Next Generation of Innovation
My latest article was published in Strategy & Innovation. This is a newsletter run by Innosight which is an innovation consultancy built on the disruptive innovation frameworks developed by their founder, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen.
In the article, I argue that companies have begun to embrace open innovation and more collaborative forms of innovation and that this move requires a new mindset and a new set of skills; it is no longer enough to just be a good project manager, researcher or engineer – or leader. The skills that need to be mastered are:
• Collaboration: You have to work across business functions and with many types of innovation to turn ideas into profitable products, services or business methods.
• Relationship building: In a world of open innovation, you need to be an expert at networking and building relationships.
• Stakeholder management: You do not need to have everyone on your side, but you need to generate adequate support to champion your ideas and enough leverage to overcome major hurdles.
• Communication: You need to be able to craft compelling messages to the stakeholders you want to influence.
Do you think you are ready for the next generation of innovation? Read the article and let me know what you think.
There is not doubt that innovation leaders and intrapreneurs have lots of drive. They make things happen and this is one of their key qualities. But there is also a thing such as too much drive.
I recently had a couple of incidents where this became very clear. Both incidents evolve around people in new jobs. They have been hired to bring change to their organizations and they are eager to show their capabilities. They are actually doing a great job having started several successful initiatives. But they want even more – and faster.
And then they forget that they have some fairly unique capabilities. Most people do not have a similar drive and even more people prefer status quo over change. When such types collide, the people with drive get frustrated and they might even start to doubt their own capabilities and whether they belong to this new organization.
The strange thing is that they have every opportunity to be successful. During these incidents, I was lucky enough to also get an executive perspective on this. The company leaders would be happy if the innovation leaders had started just a third of the initiatives they had undertaken. The thing is that people with drive sometimes move too fast for others to keep up with them. Or they may set the bar higher than other people are prepared to reach. Also, people with drive sometimes are moving so fast that they fail to communicate fully with others about where they’re headed and why others should follow.
There are two lessons here. Manage your stakeholders and be prepared to adjust your goals and expectations. Always keep in mind that the change you are so eager to bring about affects other people, who can put roadblocks in your path if they think you’re going too far too fast. Identify and map these people and get a sense of how they feel about the things you want to change. Do this not only during the preparation of new initiatives but also during the implementation. This will also give you a better understanding of what success looks like. Maybe you also have to adjust – up or down – on this.
One of my favourite reads is Strategy & Innovation which is a newsletter run by innovation consultancy Innosight - www.innosight.com.
In their latest edition, the feature article is about innovation in tough times. They suggest what you should and should not do in a situation like this.
With regards to budgets, they suggest you should pre-empt the discussion and voluntarily scale back your line items. Their take is that leadership will appreciate having one less hard negotiation to walk through and that you will likely find that a sharper focus increases your time and freedom to experiment properly. Their suggested ways you can consider “giving back” include:
- Release any part-time team members back to their “day jobs” in the core business — in reality, 2-3 dedicated people will accomplish far more than 30 people assigned to spend 10 percent of their time on a program anyway.
- Prune your portfolio — revisit the concepts in your portfolio, prioritize them based on anticipated time to profit, and temporarily shelve the bottom half of the list or any idea that will not be profitable within 6 months.
- De-feature your concepts — look for performance areas where you may be overshooting the needs of the customer and eliminate them. Remember, consumers are in this economy with you and they will not be paying for performance they don’t need.
- Revisit your research approaches and expenses — entrepreneurs make do with small sample sizes, social media input, and low-cost interviews to get directional information with which to develop their concepts.
- Reduce the cost of your field trials — if you focus on testing one or two assumptions at a time, you will soon realize you do not need a fully functioning prototype or a three-month in-market pilot release to learn new things about your offering and the target market.
Check out the full story on this link: http://www.innosight.com/innovation_resources/strategy_and_innovation.html. You need to register.
In a previous blog entry, I listed six characteristics I believe are essential in the people who fill these important slots on an organizational chart: optimism, passion and drive, curiosity, belief in change, a talent for networking, and communication skills. I’ve just come across a new book that has convinced me to add another trait to this list: a sense of urgency.
The book I’m referring to is, naturally enough, entitled A Sense of Urgency. At 128 pages, this book is a quick, but important read. Its author, John Kotter, is emeritus professor at Harvard Business School and a world-renowned author on the topic of organizational transformation. In a previous best seller, Leading Change, he set out a six-step process for making change happen. The first step in that process was creating a sense of urgency. In an interview published on-line in Strategy+Business, Kotter says he believes achieving and maintaining the required sense of urgency is the area most companies fall down when trying to create change.
I’d guess most of us have experienced this problem at some point. We know our company is facing challenges that dictate change yet we can’t bring ourselves–or motivate others–to move beyond our comfort zone of doing things the way they’ve always been done. Trying to create new products or services or be innovative in our business processes is always threatening to some portion of people within an organization. And if a really big change, such as developing a new business model, is in order, then we’re really up against the powerful intransigent forces of those who fear change and cling to the status quo.
The older the organization and the greater the success it has had, the harder the battle is to generate a sense of urgency, sometimes even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the need to transform and innovate. But obviously, most organizations, when faced with a real crisis, can quickly a sense of urgency. But Kotter advocates a “permanent” sense of urgency, not just urgency in the jaws of a crisis. He describes it as the gut level feeling that acknowledges that the world out there has enormous opportunities and hazards. It is behavior that’s very alert for both opportunities and threads on a daily basis.
Innovation leaders and intrapreneurs are in prime positions to keep a sense of urgency alive and well within an organization. This means keeping your own sense of urgency thriving. As Kotter puts it, it’s about getting up every single day and believing that you must do something that will help change your organization for the better.
What we can learn from Denmark. That is the headline of a blog post by Gina O´Connor on the Grabbing Lightning blog. Gina praises Denmark for having a unrelenting focus on innovation and for the programs and networks developing the organizational innovation capabilities of Danish companies.
Her experiences as a teacher in Denmark also prompts her to ask the question: “Is the US keeping pace? While Danish companies appear to embrace the latest management practices and learning for developing an innovation competency, what are US companies doing?”
As a Dane and as the founder of INTRAP, which is a network for people working on the intersection of leadership and innovation, I agree that we do pretty well on innovation networks and programs in Denmark.
Compared to American companies, I also find Danish companies to be very good at developing organizational innovation capabilities where as American companies could teach us a lot on go-to-market strategies.
I travel frequently to Silicon Valley and I experience a growing interest in peer-to-peer networks for innovation leaders and in programs such as the Corporate Entrepreneurship Leadership program that Gina teaches at. I have also heard that the CEL program might be exported to Stanford. That could be interesting!
We can learn from each other across continents and I hope the flow of people teaching across continents and the exchange of ideas and processes keep growing. Innovation is truly global.
For an innovation effort–and the transformation it requires–to succeed, employees must be convinced that company leaders are serious about supporting new ways of thinking and acting. Is it just talk or have you as an innovation leaders been given a strong mandate to make real change? This is the first big question any innovation effort must answer.
The mandate should be easy to communicate to the stakeholders who will be involved in reaching the intent or purpose. The mandate:
• Should lay out the resources and authority given to the innovation team.
• Clarify how potential conflicts are to be handled.
• Encourage stakeholders to solve problems on issues such as resource allocation
and commitment without involving the executives.
The innovation leaders must get full support from the executives in the early phases of the setup where they have to prove their mandate. If the middle managers sense that the innovation leaders do not have executive support, they will tend to focus on their own agenda rather than on what is best for the company. In such cases executives need to send strong public signals internally that they support this initiative even to a level where they commit personally. Executives will also need to have showdowns with individuals or groups that appear to be less than supportive of change.
Innovation leaders must also “educate” the executives on innovation and, more importantly, they must make the consequences of executive decisions very clear. The executives often do not have this overview.
It is not easy being an innovation leader or an executive when dealing with innovation issues. A few years ago, I had an interesting talk with an innovation leader at an international producer of high-end goods. The company had relied on a stable product portfolio for many years. It has been successful, but the company knew they had to look beyond incremental innovation to prosper in the future. They needed to work on paradigm shifts that included a stronger focus on services and solutions rather than just products.
For this they brought in a great innovation leader who quickly built a team of people with different backgrounds and competences than the other people working with innovation. It was a good match between incremental and radical innovation, but inevitably this also caused many clashes between the different mindsets.
The innovation leader had to educate the CEO on his ideas and mindset. That process went well but the innovation leader and his team continued having clashes with other parts of the organization. The innovation leader brought this up with the CEO and he was a bit surprised to receive this response: “Bob, I like what you are doing and I really want to support your work. You know that. However, if your initiatives cause too much trouble, I need to listen to our core people. They are the guys who bring in our revenues and profits and we need this. Try to work this out in a subtle manner.”
More directly speaking, the message was that if there is too much trouble, the CEO would have to kick out the innovation leader with short notice to satisfy the other guys. Unfortunately, many innovation leaders do not have a clear mandate from their executives. This can cause bad situations, and it definitely makes the job of an innovation leader even harder.
