What we can learn about Innovation from Fronzie

The word innovation has “jumped the shark” According to our friends at jumptheshark.com, “jumping the shark is”:

A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it "Jumping the Shark." From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same…The aforementioned expression refers to the telltale sign of the demise of Happy Days, our favorite example, when Fonzie actually "jumped the shark." The rest is history.

Here is how I know:

A buzz is starting regarding the overuse of the word innovation. Link

You can buy something called SpeedInnovating, to “unleash the inner innovator” Link

The dramatic growth in the number of Google results for the word innovation by year. Link

Can firms innovation alone? It depends

Jeff Phillips of Innovate on Purpose wrote an interesting essay exploring the issue of whether or not a corporation can innovate by itself or if other partners are required.

He writes, “In the case of new products, it is still too difficult to innovate by oneself unless the product can be designed, manufactured, and tested by one firm.”

This is an interesting point that I want to add to. The first question to ask is how are we defining innovation? Are we talking about a product extension or something new to the world? Product extensions may be done collaboratively with other partners while new to the world ideas may or may not work in a collaborative development model.

So, the second question to ask is, "Is this new to the world idea a combination of existing pieces (i.e. Dell’s distribution model) or is it a unique technology application?" Ideas that are combinations of existing pieces may be commercialized with other partners, while unique technology applications must be developed independently.

Unique technology applications have architectures that are highly integral. Interactions between the subassemblies are not well understood and the product has to be designed, manufactured, and tested by one firm.

Setting Expectations

I am having trouble installing Turbo Tax on my computer so I went to the website to find a phone number to call since none was provided in the packaging.

I was pleasantly surprised to find this page and the estimated wait time. I think that it is a great idea to set the customer’s expectation around how long they will have to wait.

The only glitch is that I don’t have any faith in the validity of the wait time. Notice that screen shot denotes a ten minute wait, but the screen capture was taken at 10am Eastern time a full hour before the phone bank even opens.

You have to be honest with your customers/clients about setting expectations.

Economist Survey: The Company

The January 21st issue of the Economist has a great survey of modern corporations titled “The New Organization.” You can buy it here.

Some key quotes:

Their [a company’s] vertically oriented organizational structures, retrofitted with ad hoc and matrix overlays, nearly always make professional work more complex and inefficient.

The flattening of the organization has had at least on unintended consequence. With fewer rungs on the ladder, there is now less opportunity to make visible progress to the top: promotion from within the company has become rarer.

Organizations are strongly inclined to carry on with “the way things are done around here” unless they have a compelling reason to stop.

The unavoidable reality is that long-term advantage also requires skills at creating organic growth.

There is no relationship between R&D spending and the primary measures of economic or corporate success.

Too many product extensions can have an adverse effect on overall market share and can push up costs.

In the Linux and Toyota communities…leading is not treated as a discipline distinct from doing. Rather, the authority of leaders derives from their proficiency as practitioners.

Setting the Tone

There is an interesting post today by Mark Graban at The Lean Manufacturing Blog. He highlights how part of Merck’s strategy to come up with innovative ways to reduce waste includes cutting jobs and that this will not deliver the results that the company is looking for.

The Merck situation is an example of how the Senior Leadership paradigm affects actual results. It seems like they already know the right answer to become more efficient (cut jobs). Had they kept a more open stance who knows what they may have come up with?

So what does this mean for you, the project manager? It means this, your actions matter. For your team, or project, you are the Senior Leadership. What things are you doing to foster a learning environment?

Super Cool Application

Here is a nifty application from the USA Track and Field Organization. Using Google maps technology the application lets map and measure different running routes.

It is very simple to use and if you run, or bike, or whatever this is a really cool application. Before if I wanted to map a route like this I would have to print out a map and use a piece of calibrated string to try and mark out a route. Now, it is a couple of mouse clicks. The neatest part about this software is that it solved a problem I didn't even know that I had. It wasn't until I saw the software that I realized what a pain in the neck my old process was.

Here is an example.

You can also get the super cool satellite view

Who should drive?

So, if it is up to Senior Leadership to right the innovation ship (and who else would it be up to really?) than what type of person should be at the top? The answer to this of course is “it depends.”

All leadership opportunities are situational. Someone who might be a great turnaround artist for a consumer goods company in a mature market may fail at a small communications company in an emerging market. There are many more dimensions to leadership and many people, much smarter than I, have tried to distill the essence of leadership. If it is easily captured I do not know about it.

So what does this mean to you, assuming you are not part of the small group at the top who makes some of the key leadership positions? We can’t change people that don’t get it. So, if we work for, or with, these types of people we need to be the candle in the dark. Just because they chose not to listen, or already have the answer, or put down people’s new ideas, doesn’t mean that we have follow suit. Sometimes that hardest thing to do is model the right behavior in a broken environment.

If the environment is that broken don’t be the victim and gut it out. Move, you are worth it.

Why aren't more companies innovative?

I’ve been thinking a lot about why established companies aren’t naturally more innovative. There are mounds and mounds of data pointing to the fact that unless companies continue to find new ways to make money they will eventually die. Lots of companies realize this, and lots of companies try, but many of them do not know how to be innovative.

I believe that the root cause for the lack of innovation is the mental paradigms of the Senior Leadership staff.

There are a small, but crucial, set of strategic decisions that are made at the senior level. They are: What products do we make? Who do we sell them to? And how do we create them? These decisions are made by a small group of people, regardless of the size of the institution, and they influence the millions of other decisions made within the corporation. (This is because is hierarchical organizations people will do what they are told)

If the Senior Leadership Staff is willing to realize that running the business is an act of exploration that requires the willing suspension of existing paradigms in order to learn what the right answers are, then their answers to the crucial set of questions plant the seeds of innovation. If, however, the Senior Leadership staff has a fixed set of paradigms, and knows right answers are, then they answer the questions differently. Their set of answers will slowly salt the innovation garden.

Creating Transperency

A friend of mine is having a problem on his project. The designer assigned to his project is not delivering to her commitments. He has talked to her personally about her performance but it hasn’t done much good. He’s hesitant to go to her supervisor for a couple of reasons. First, it could strain the relationship he has with the designer and the two were friends before he became a project manager. Secondly, the probable supervisor response will be to minimize the situation, and coincidently reducing the amount of effort he has to expend to solve it. It is often easier to ignore an issue than to admit one exists and then have to fix it.

Here’s where my friend went wrong. He’s not keeping an action register of the different tasks, when they were assigned, when they are due, and what the current status is. Most people do not like to operate at this level of detail because it seems like overkill and 80% of the time this is a true statement. However, the other 20% of the time the action register is an invaluable tool.

If my friend had kept the log, he would then have data with which to have a discussion. The data creates transparency to the project, much like the “How’s my driving?” stickers bring transparency to driver performance. By having data, the argument becomes one of fact rather than emotion and becomes much harder for the supervisor to ignore.

So, exactly what ARE they supposed to do?

Here is a too funny, true story from a friend of mine. It speaks for itself.

What are the expectations at our United States Postal Service? Someone needs to innovate a way to motivate our civil servants. I am not asking to get candy when I mail a package but a smile and a shave would be nice.

The follwing is not atypical. I entered into the post office this morning with a simple goal - buy a box, insert package, address package, and send package. Of the 7 employees visible, 3 were addressing the 20 person queue that had formed. I went into action and asked one of the milling employees if they had the third largest box on display so that I might prepare my package prior to entering the line.

Response: "huh, ummm, you need to stand in line"

Not too sarcastically I reply "ok...that makes sense."

Fast forward to 15 minutes later. I have finally made it to the front of the line. The directional lighting system that alerts people to the available teller is broken, so I was carefully listening for the droning of "step around." Ther it was, it was my turn. To my surprise the person that I had asked originally for the box is now behind the counter. So I ask again for the third largest box.

The floowing ensued:

Teller: "Which one?"

Me: "The third largest"

Teller: "I do not understand size, what is the price"

Me: pause of disbelief "uhhh...the one that is $3.19."

Teller: "We do not have that one"

Me: keeping calm and being careful not to relate my need in size "ok how about the larger one for $3.65, I do not have anything fragile that should be ok"

Teller: "We do not have that either"

Me: jaw dropping pause

Teller: "All we have are the two small boxes, the rest are going to be shipped by the end of the week"

Me: perturbed "you mean the ones for $1.95 and $2.50?"

Teller: "Yes, the two small boxes"

Me: jaw dropped, long pause

Teller: "You can try Staples around the corner they should have a large box."

Simply tell them to do it?

Well, it's not that simple. It's true that in a modern organization people do what they are told or else suffer the consequences. Senior leadership recognizing that the current organizational ouput reflects the current expectations is a necessary but not sufficient part of the solution.

The next step is to determine where you want to go and then how you want to get there.This is not as easy as it sounds and history is littered with discarded flavor of the month company programs.

The important message is this, if your program team is not innovative, or productive, or whatever enough it's because they are doing what they are being asked to do.

Happy New Year everyone and welcome back.

Over the holiday break I was reading Seth Godin’s blog update regarding the secrets of every service business. Seth writes:

1. Take responsibility
2. Pay attention to detail

The thing that's so surprising is how little attention is paid to these two, how often we run into people (business to business or b2c) who are totally clueless about them.

I got to wondering about why this is. Why don’t people take responsibility and pay attention to detail? The simple answer is that they aren’t expected too.

Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience experiments concluded “the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study.”

So, if people will do what they are told, and they are not doing it, then they are not being told to.
This translates directly into the product development realm. Organizational output is a direct result of the leadership expectation. People will follow the authentic message sent by the leadership team, the one that is backed up by the resource allocation process.