While there are many skills that help us to implement ideas, we will focus on six core attributes critical to this stage of innovation:
- To work out what needs to be done
- To see responsibilities through to completion
- To see what could go wrong and know how to minimise risk
- To collaborate and build partnerships with others
- To assemble teams with complementary skills and knowledge
- To help people complete their work in allocated budgets and timeframes
Let us look at each one in turn.
Below is a top-line summary of the skills and their associated tools and activities for the area of implement.
| Skills | Tools | Activities |
| To work out what needs to be done | Project planning Task allocation | Create a project plan |
| To see responsibilities through to completion | Decide on priorities Spend time with an implementer | |
| To see what could go wrong and know how to minimise risk | Risk management | Create a board of advisors |
| To collaborate and build partnerships with others | Skills assessment | |
| To assemble teams with complementary skills and knowledge | Ways of working | Team dynamics Team vision board |
| To help people complete their work in allocated budgets and timeframes | Six ‘I’s® Tracker | Fit role to motivation |
SKILL ONE – Being able to work out what needs to be done
Whether you are an entrepreneur, small business owner or working in a large organisation, we all have the same amount of time: 24 hours a day. For most of us, we spend the majority of our days ‘working’, doing activities that generate income or keep us employed. We are busy. But, are we productive? Productivity is not about the number of hours that you work. It is about how smart you are with the time that you have to accomplish the results that you need to achieve. It is very tempting to spend a lot of time doing things so we look busy or have a feeling that we are moving towards a goal, but stand back and reflect on how you are spending your time. How much time are you sitting in meetings wishing you were somewhere else, or distracting yourself from doing something that should be higher on your list of priorities? The ability to plan and organise is a critical skill when trying to bring something new into the world. It is not planning for planning’s sake; it is thinking through carefully what needs to be done that will help an idea get traction. Often, particularly in the early days of implementing something new, time is of the essence and cannot be wasted.
ACTIVITY
Create a project plan
Revisit your Purpose Statement.
- When do you want to see your idea working and creating value?
- Work back through The Six ‘I’s® to help you create a timeline and put in dates.
- If you need to see results by a certain time, make sure you create space to focus on the first few ‘I’s so that you can make the solution more robust.
- Keep yourself and others focused on the outcome of what you are trying to create.
TOOLS
Task allocation
Go back to your vision board from the invest stage. What will help you achieve your vision?
- List all the things that need to be accomplished.
- Categorise these into the following themes:
- Process (operational and administrative)
- Change (product and service development)
- Results (sales, marketing and business development)
- People (team and customer)
- Prioritise the tasks according to their innovation impact.
- Do this each week and always keep a balance between four areas.
TOOLS
Task allocation
- Create a grid, like the table on the next page.
- Down the side put each action.
- Along the top put who, what, when, where and how.
- Think through and write down the best way to organise the activities that need to be accomplished, within each of the categories, in order to reach the vision.
- How are you going to track your plan?
SKILL TWO – Being able to see responsibilities through to completion
When we think of innovation, we often think of creativity – but, as we have already discussed, being creative, no matter how important, is only one part of being innovative. Being successful at taking an idea – retaining its novelty and creating value out of it – requires a complex raft of skills, capabilities and processes.
A few years back, we worked with a high growth technology business. They had a very innovative product and service offering and a committed leadership team that was focused on getting results. The challenge, however, was customer demand, a great challenge to have but only if you can keep pace and manage the stress on the operational aspect of delivering the service. Customer complaints were increasing and there were quality control issues. They could not cope. In analysing their data, the leadership team were high on skills associated with identify and ignite and, while they had employees that were high on implement, there was no one in the leadership team that was taking a methodical and painstaking approach to thinking through how they could make their service operational more effectively. Being systematic requires the ability to be methodical, detail-orientated, analytical and process-orientated and controlled. These qualities are vital in testing whether processes and procedures will generate consistent and optimal results and make innovation work.
ACTIVITY
Decide on priorities
- Pick one of your goals.
- Break it down into discrete activities.
- Think of the interdependencies between all the activities. What needs to be done first?
- Allocate how much time you think you will need for each task.
- Prioritise what is urgent and what is important.
- Pick an important activity and think through the best way to make it work.
- Do that first. This will give you some energy and momentum when you start to see it move into action.
- Be aware if you are just living in the urgent box all the time – this will wear you out.
ACTIVITY
Spend time with an implementer
- Talk to someone who thinks more systematically than you do who is also action-orientated.
- Ask them questions on how they approach activities. For example:
- Tell me about how you approach your work. What do you do first?
- Tell me in sequence what you do next.
- What do you do when circumstances change? How do you factor in changes to your plans?
- How do you get people to follow through on what they are responsible for?
- What can you learn from them?
- Incorporate one of their strategies into how you work.
SKILL THREE – Being able to see what could go wrong and know how to minimise risk
While innovating is often synonymous with risk taking, it does not mean that we blindly walk into the unknown. Part of implementing an idea is being good at managing risk. This requires being able to see ahead and think about where and when risks may appear and scenarios for the best way to minimise or reduce them. A lot of risks may have financial implications. If you are a small business invoicing for work from a large company with a 90-day payment policy, how are you going to cover the three months before you get paid? You may well have a great product or service, but cash is king and many a small venture has failed because they have not managed cash flow projection. Or, if you are working on a new venture in a large organisation that could potentially cannibalise current revenue streams from existing products and services, how are you going to manage the loss of potential income? Risk management requires a certain type of discipline. Being able to innovate, from a skills perspective, requires the curious combination of creativity and discipline, often seen as opposite ends of a spectrum. Creativity is a bit messy and unpredictable and discipline is about order and control, but you need both to do well. The art is knowing when to apply what skill and what mindset, with awareness.
TOOLS
Risk management
Brainstorm all the things that you think could go wrong with your plan:
- Identify the risks.
- Analyse them.
- Rank them in terms of impact.
- Assess options.
- Think through how you can reduce the risks.
- Proactively manage the risks.
ACTIVITY
Create a board of advisors
- Create a board of advisors; whether it is a lawyer, tax accountant, financial planner or someone in a profession that manages risks, ask them for their perspective.
- If you are an entrepreneur, do you have the right insurance policies to protect yourself and your business? Ask for professional advice on what might be required.
SKILL FOUR – Being able to collaborate
and build partnerships with others
‘I don’t seem to be able to get traction,’ an aspiring entrepreneur said to me as we discussed how she could get her new business idea up and running. ‘I get distracted by other ideas and can’t seem to settle on one and see it through.’ I was facilitating a Women Who Lead (WWL) retreat in Bali, which I hold a couple of times a year for female executives. A number of women, from all walks of life, were present. Some were CEOs, others small business owners; some were in between career choices and others directors in their respective domains. Each woman had arrived, stressed out from the demands of life and work, to spend uninterrupted time with an idea for a new project or business that they wanted to create. The aim of the retreat was to flesh out their ideas and work on the capabilities and skills that each would need to develop to allow them to step up to a new level of leadership and bring their ideas to life.
Looking through her Six ‘I’s® profile, the pattern became obvious. As a high identifier and igniter, this lady was not short on ideas; in fact, she was highly creative. Her invest and implement strengths were very low, however, causing her to bounce from idea to idea. This diluted her focus, and therefore her energy, not giving the time to move an idea into something concrete and practical.
It is one thing to have an idea and vision; it is another to make it happen. Yet, the skills of implement are often not seen as a valued part of the innovator’s tool kit. They are critical. We created an implementation plan together and isolated key people in the networks of the retreat participants with whom she could, potentially, explore partnership opportunities.
TOOLS
Skills assessment
- Go back to your plan.
- Under each activity, list the skills, capabilities and experience that you need to help your idea get traction.
- What skills do you have access to and what is missing?
- What key people could help you make your idea work? These can be directly in your team and/or other important stakeholders. Why should they get involved to support you? (What is in it for them?)
- Go through the key areas of your plan. Who may you need to partner to help you implement your idea?
- What type of support do you need? i.e. marketing, sales, product development, design, finance etc.
- Get advice on any areas that may involve legal agreements: formal joint ventures, alliances, etc.
DID YOU KNOW?
When Anita Roddick opened her first Body Shop® in 1976, she had no idea at just how successful it would become. She had identified a need for natural cosmetics that would appeal to her customers’ concern for the environment. She invested a $6,500 loan and ignited ideas that addressed her need for low cost and also fit her environmental Purpose, offering discounted refills to customers, using minimal packaging to keep costs as low as possible. The business grew. To capitalise on expansion, and to raise investment, the Roddicks took The Body Shop® public in 1984. After just one day of trading, the stock doubled in value. By the end of 1992, she had implemented 700 Body Shop® stores, generating $231 million revenue.
But not all was easy and there were periods of declining sales and growing pains as she continued to implement her ideas. In 1996, the Roddicks brought in professional managers, installing tighter inventory control and streamlining processes. ‘We’ve gone through a period of squashing one hell of a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit,’ she told Fortune magazine. ‘We’re having to grow up; we have to get methods and processes in. And the result of that is a hierarchy that comes in and I think that’s anti-productive.’ This implementation failed to have the desired effect, and sales declined. After dismal financial performance in 1998, Roddick stepped down from being CEO and brought in Patrick Gourney to run the business. By 2004, The Body Shop® had 1,980 stores, serving over 77 million customers throughout the world. It was voted the second most trusted brand in the United Kingdom, and twenty-eighth top brand in the world. In March 2006, L’Oréal purchased The Body Shop® for $853 million and sold it in 2017 to a Brazilian cosmetics company, Natura Cosemitcos, owned by Aesop, for $1.6 billion, higher than analysts predicted. The innovation journey, for The Body Shop®, continues.
‘If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.’
Anita Roddick
What does this story illustrate? Anita Roddick had a very clear Purpose and she remained committed as she implemented her ideas. She had a strong vision and used the fact she did not have much money to invest to play to her Purpose. She remained committed, through the growing pains of professionalising the business. Through a combination of low-key marketing, consumer education and social activism, The Body Shop® rewrote the rulebook for the $16 billion global cosmetics business and made Roddick one of the richest women in England. The story continues, post her untimely death in 2007, and The Body Shop® brand has to continue to identify new opportunities and ignite ideas that they can implement into their market place.
SKILL FIVE – Being able to assemble teams with complementary skills and knowledge
We know that teaming is essential to successful innovation. As you become more aware of your own and others’ strengths and learn how to work with different skills and experiences, you will increase your likelihood of success. When choosing people to partner, find out their Six ‘I’s® profile, and what you look like as a team. Too many igniters? You might have great fun generating new ideas, but who is going to focus on implementation?
There are many variables to take into consideration – temperament and personality preferences, experience and background, technical skill, the ability to communicate and build relationships, shared values – to name a few. Increasingly, work is dispersed geographically and virtual working is on the rise, so how will you manage that? The important thing is to go back to your Purpose. What are you trying to create and what is the problem you are trying to solve? Also, you may or may not be the right person to lead your innovation initiative now, but that may change. What type of leadership required at different stages of implementation will vary, but be ready to spot when change is required. The raft of skills, background, personalities and values will differ, depending on the nature of what it is you are trying to do. The important thing is to think about it consciously and plan for it.
The Six ‘I’s® Profile is not a personality tool, it is a skills strengths indicator that will give insight into yourself and other people’s perceived innovation skills. Personality differences also impact our innovation style, so it is worth spending some time accelerating your awareness of your own and other’s personalities as well, particularly if you are building teams. There are many different psychometric tools available to help you understand personality differences. A few that I have used with coaching clients and team building are Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Enneagram (Integrative9), and the Spony Profiling Model (SPM).
ACTIVITY
Team dynamics
ACTIVITY
Team vision board
You may have created a vision board for yourself, but try creating one with the group of people you want to work with. This will help you collectively invent the future together.
- In light of your collective vision, ask each person to create their own vision board of how they see themselves personally contributing.
- How do each person’s skills fit together as a whole?
- What is missing?
TOOLS
Ways of working
Establish how you want to work with others:
- Agree on the behaviours that you will hold each other to account on and think about when these might need to change depending on the stage of the innovation journey.
- If you are working remotely, decide what online tools you will use and how and when you will have informal and formal online check-ins as well as face-to-face meetings.
- Use the Grid to help create team alignment and a shared way of working.
SKILL SIX – Being able to help people complete their work in allocated budgets and timeframes
We may not like to speak of innovation and management in the same breath but, in fact, to be really successful at innovating, we need to be good at managing it, from idea, through to implementation and improvement. When I started working in this field many years ago, the tools and processes that I found for managing innovation were very technical in nature and developed mostly for research and development (R&D) and product development purposes. While these are appropriate in some instances, very few focused on people, process or service innovation.
What this book is focusing on is the human factor – the ability to mobilise skills and create the conditions that will motivate others – to create and implement something new. Managing innovation, whether you are managing yourself, a loose group of contributors or partners or trying to bring a new idea to life in an organisational context, requires the skill of knowing how to motivate people and keep them on track towards a common Purpose. Innovation, unlike some other forms of management, has the added complexity of the unknown. You are doing something new, so the stakes are higher for all concerned. Things get tough, things fail, and resources – time, money and skills, in particular – may be limited. One of the bigger concerns is the change in priorities – innovative ideas and projects that might have been a key area of focus fall off the radar in response to other pressures. The damage that this can do to individual and team motivation can be immense.
TOOLS
Six ‘I’s® Tracker
Use The Six ‘I’s® as an innovation management process.
- At which ‘I’ is your idea?
- Have you identified a clear opportunity?
- Have you ignited an idea that can become a solution?
- Have you investigated how it could work?
- Have you got the necessary investment?
- Are you ready to move into implementation?
If not, move back to the relevant ‘I’ and think about what needs to be done. Play to the strengths of your team’s (or partner’s) Six ‘I’s® profiles.
Use the following table to help you manage your ideas.
ACTIVITY
Fit roles to motivations
Look at your and your team’s personality results.
- What motivates you and them?
- How can you appeal to their motivations as well as their skills and abilities to keep them involved and energised?
Dangers of Missing Out the IMPLEMENT Stage
- You (or your team) may not have clear goals.
- There will be a lack of clarity on role and responsibilities.
- You will lack results orientation and a way to evaluate performance.
- Your ideas will stay as ideas and not move into value creation. Innovation will not be achieved.