CHAPTER 10
Taking Action in Your Firm

Having read this far, it is perhaps safe to assume that you are someone deeply involved in or concerned about the future of your firm. And having read all about what the Innovation Vanguard firms are doing, and having jotted down your own ideas as to how to best develop an innovation process for your firm, you now face a choice—whether you will act on your ideas or whether you’ll let your good intentions lapse.

The choice is what you will do with the ideas you’ve gained from investing your time in reading this book. It could easily be that the forward progress of your firm rests on what you decide to do at this point.

You could chose to file your notes away in a file marked “someday.” But that wouldn’t help you and your firm to address the Growth Gap we talked about in Chapter 1.

Fact is, no business consciously sets out to manage the past, to allow growth to lapse. No leader sets out to let this happen. Instead, it happens gradually. 184The world continues to change. Customers’ needs continue to change. The business keeps on serving up yesterdays ideas… until it’s too late.

On the other hand, you could decide to act on your intentions and on the ideas you hatched as you read through this book and developed your blueprint for a new way to ensure results from innovation. The question is, where should you start to take action, how do you gain support for your beliefs, and what exactly should you do?

Perhaps the best recommendation at this point would be to ask you to recall that in each of the Vanguard firms we reported on, somebody somewhere did something to get things going. At General Electric, it was the CEO, Jeff Immelt. But in countless other companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell and many others, it was a division head with vision, ambition and drive who saw the potential to derive serious growth. In other companies, it was a general manager who first took action and achieved results, which eventually brought the entire company onboard.

Whether you’re a mid-level manager, a director, a project manager, an outside consultant, or an individual contributor with an interest in innovation, you can make a big difference. What matters is what you do with what you’ve learned about how innovation is being practiced inside a small but growing group of firms. What matters is what you do with what you know to start your company on a new path.

If you’re an individual contributor, you can take small steps at first to build awareness. You can email or even pick up the phone and call some of the people I’ve written about in these pages and ask them for their ideas. You can tap the resources listed in the Source Notes & Resources at the end of this book, and attend the conferences listed where you’ll be able to interact with others who are currently or have already done what you’re trying to do.

If you’re a part of management, you’ll be able to share the first draft of your innovation blueprint that you’ve been working on as you covered the material in this book and applied it to your firm. You can also start “talking up” what other firms are doing in the Innovation Vanguard, how they fill the funnel, solicit ideas from everyone, listen in new ways to customers for unarticulated needs, and you can start planting seeds in people’s minds. By so doing, you will raise awareness for innovation, and you can put innovation on the agenda, every agenda you can and start being a quiet evangelist for change and a subtle educator on the subject.

Next, identify others in your organization who have an interest in the topic. Find out what they know, what they are reading, what their thinking is on the field, and begin the process of bringing them up to speed on what you’re thinking. Listen to their insights and ideas and feed back to them that their ideas may not be so far-fetched after all; then tell them about the companies in this book.

What you’re after is a core team of people who believe, as you do, that “there’s got to be a better way” to achieve innovation, and that growth can be the result. To find your core team, write up the notes you’ve jotted down while reading this book, polish them a bit, and share them with anybody you talk with inside the firm who shows genuine interest.

Please do not call this document a manifesto, and fight the tendency to suggest that those in upper management “don’t get it.” While some of my colleagues in the Innovation Movement advocate writing manifestos and charging the gates of administrator-caretaker leaders, we have seen that such rhetoric is counterproductive to building the buy-in for change. Research with Innovation Vanguard companies suggests that the politics of inclusion and quiet, persistent coalition-building works far better.

Why? Because it brings everybody along, doesn’t create enemies in the future, and stresses the benefits everyone in the company will enjoy when these suggestions for improvement are implemented.

Innovation, like Total Quality Management 20 years ago, is a movement. Most companies judge their quality initiatives to be fairly successful, and they are proud of the results. On the other hand, most companies were dissatisfied with their attempts at reengineering. The difference? The Quality Movement understood the need to involve everybody—from the shop floor to the executive suites. The Reengineering Movement did not. The advocates of reengineering thought they could design individual processes in a company, and achieve dramatic cost-savings. Instead they created massive distrust and alienation because people felt threatened. Would they have a job at the end of all the chaos? What was the benefit to the individual? The Innovation Vanguard companies have taken to heart the necessity that wide participation and demystification of any change effort are necessary for success.

Prepare an Innovation Initiative that addresses each of the following areas:

Objectives

• What does innovation mean for your company? How will/do you define it?
• Why is innovation an initiative?
• What are the desired outcomes?

Culture

• What are the desired values/behaviors for all associates to follow?
• What current values/behaviors need to be changed?

Idea Management

• What processes are in place for communicating innovative ideas?

Ownership of the process

• Address all areas of operations—not just new products.

Rewards/Recognition

• How will innovative ideas/individuals/teams be recognized?
• How will the initiative be measured?
• What defines success?

Company-wide Training

• How will the initiative be communicated?
• What resources are available to change behaviors?
• What continual reinforcement process will be in place to support an innovative culture/mindset?
• What training will be available for those individuals who need additional support?

Responsibilities & Timeline

• Define who is responsible for what and when.
• Review initiative with CEO. Get commitment and clearly agree on how it ties to overall company strategy. If not—it is a nonstarter.
• Review individually with each member of the executive committee and define how the initiative needs to be modified for their areas of responsibility. Get buy-in to the concept.
• Review with entire executive committee as a group.
• Agree on feedback mechanism from each area as to progress against the goals.
• Agree on company-wide roll-out plan.
• Roll it out—starting with the CEO. An innovation initiative has to start from the top.

As a consultant, the question I most often get is, where do we start to upgrade our innovation process? My answer is that it depends on a number of factors, from your industry’s clockspeed to your present culture and growth targets. But at the risk of painting with too broad a brush, I find most companies can best start by rethinking and redesigning their idea management systems. As we said at the beginning of this book, beyond a seldom-used suggestion box, most companies have allowed their methods of encouraging, nurturing, and acting on employee suggestions to languish. So consider starting there.

When idea management systems are designed by a cross-functional group of people, they have the best chance of acceptance. Moreover, in the act of designing and implementing a new and improved system, you will effectively accomplish other objectives as well. You’ll be putting innovation on the agenda. You’ll be discussing and learning about the discipline of innovation. You’ll inevitably be looking at innovation, not as the function and purview of only certain departments, but of the total enterprise, and every department, division, and person in it.

You’ll be taking steps that just possibly will lead to an even deeper and more fundamental transforming of your firm’s future. You’ll inevitably be called to discuss the ideas you’ll receive when you publicly ask people to 188contribute them. And if you’re like most companies, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that there are so many truly good ideas out there—that you might not have even heard about! So, start your innovation initiative by focusing on how much more effectively you can solicit and reward and develop and act on the ideas that are in your organization.

In doing so, you’ll be joining others in the Innovation Movement from around the globe who are reshaping their firms for 21st-century success. We constantly hear from these individuals, and the common theme is simply this: They believe that innovation is one of the most exciting things they’ve ever worked on in their careers.

My hope is that, as you embark upon your own journey, you will soon agree, and I wish you great success!