Innovation and Digital are two buzz words nowadays, everybody is enthusiastic and eager to innovate… yet the failure rate is about 80% and some organizations remain extremely reluctant to even try and to deploy significant means (in terms of human resources and money) to implement innovative ideas. Many employees are sincerely motivated by the concept of creating something new – big or small – and would love to dedicate some time, sometimes even after hours, to think creatively and build their “babies”, but are seldom supported by their shy management to move into concrete action steps. What a frustration ! And what a paradox ! How can you hope to get the results without putting the means into it beforehand? And how can you contemplate the successful innovative companies and say “they are lucky”? As if the results could come before the investment…
Implementing successful innovation is a process, that does not happen by luck. You have to provoke the luck if you want to be a winner. And everybody knows that.
So why are we all aspiring at being innovative, whilst remaining reluctant to put the means into it? Here are five patterns that I have observed.
- Management approach
Management is not responsible to bring in all new ideas, it is the exact opposite: innovation should best be bottom-up, and not reserved to a bunch of executives thinking alone in their ivory tower or in their exclusive seminars. However, if the management should not bring in all ideas, the management attitude should truly encourage people to be creative. Not just by saying “please, send me your ideas”, but with concrete actions.
New ideas often come from new joiners, who discover the environment with brand new eyes and with a tendency to ask “why” and “what if”, to challenge the current situation, and to propose new ideas. This being said, “new joiners” do not have to be new employees in the company; they could simply be people moving from team to team, coming and seeing the new team they belong to from a different angle. Yet, mobility is often a difficult and opaque process in lots of organizations. As such, a management structure that encourages frequent mobilities across teams has a greater chance to hear innovative ideas from its employees.
Furthermore, most companies recognize their employees for their achievements. Therefore, someone who has not fully achieved something special is not recognized. Instead, employees should also be recognized for bringing up ideas, even if they are not the ones implementing them. Some people are good at having ideas, even if they are only theoretical; some people are good at implementing ideas coming from others. Yet, in the end, any new stuff is the result of (1) having an idea, and (2) being able to put it into practice. There is no reason why the same person should do everything. Recognize the talents of those able to design or even just propose concepts, as much as the ones able to put them into life. Team work will then support the connection between the creators and the actors or facilitators to concretely implement the concepts.
Lastly, standard management practices highly encourage people who are able to do things, but it can sometimes be hard for hands-on SMEs to pitch their ideas to those who could fund them. Someone who is very hands-on and sees every day what could be done better, is often unable to sell his ideas, and explain why his or her ideas could be the next big thing… as a result, the management remains forever unaware of the potential. Some senior executives even blame their SMEs for remaining stuck in their old habits and not speaking up. Instead, teach your people to pitch their ideas, and you have a greater chance not to miss the opportunities lying in front of your eyes.
- Lack of a structured approach, or process to innovation, and lack of the adequate environment
The next barrier to innovation that I observed is the lack of a space where people can bring in their ideas. And I use the word space in three ways here.
First, the space often missing is physical: in order to be innovative, people have to fully activate the right side of their brains. It does not easily happen in formal meetings, with a specifically set agenda. Instead, think about creating a “co-creation space” where employees could come and bring in the ideas they have, and brainstorm with their colleagues to elaborate on the seeds they have in mind. Same room or open space, same day and time every week or month: a space dedicated to innovation, where people are encouraged to think differently.
Thinking differently is indeed the second aspect of the innovation space. We are working in an environment ruled by business processes, and bypassing these set processes, policies and rules is forbidden. But, when you think about it, the business process is the enemy of innovation. Processes that are set in stone and have to be followed by the letter are certainly the key to efficiency, but they encourage a “closed mindset”, and are not letting any space for innovation. Instead, encourage people to sometimes, in reasonable ways, and with some structure behind, to bypass the business processes in order to be able to try baby steps of innovation.
Lastly, we all know that the process is the key to efficiency and customer satisfaction. So ensure that your innovation space is articulated around a structured thought process to support ideas from initiation to execution. For example, the process could be: discover, frame, idea-te, build, constantly upgrade. You may call the steps differently, but the concept is to provide structure to the employees who come with seeds of ideas; make sure you help them to kick off a process that will lead them to elaborate the ideas beyond the initial seeds and give them a chance to try to implement them. This process should be visible, and supported by specific tools at each step – not necessarily complex tools, but simple tools that give structure to the employees and help them along the way.
- Absence of customer thinking, innovation driven by financials
The third barrier to innovation I often see is the driver, or the expectations criteria: innovation measured for their return on investment fails. Instead, innovation should be driven by the customers, and because your customers are going to be impressed, you will get more business and more customers subsequently. Sometimes you will fail, but if you spend a good amount of time to think in the shoes of your customers, to truly understand them, and to dedicate your time to innovate for them, the return will come, for sure, but in unpredictable terms. As such, starting an innovation project with an ROI analysis, and hoping to be able to predict how much more business will come thanks to the new idea is totally impossible and will kill all your innovation initiatives. You do not innovate with the straight objective to make money; you innovate in order to serve your clients better, and as a result, you will make more money.
In order to find the right innovation spots though, you will have to do a lot of forward customer thinking. You have to anticipate what the customers will want ahead of them thinking about it. In order to do that, some very successful innovative companies build all their roadmaps backwards: start by defining what could create a wow-effect for your customers, and then define what you should do to close the gap between where you are now, and where you want to be. With this approach, you discover that you have to create new practices, new tools, new services… in order to close that gap. Innovation comes from the need to close the gap to reach the next customer aspiration, which will in turn, bring you more business.
Another good way of letting your innovation be driven by customer thinking is to experiment your new services or products, as if you were the customer. Create some cells where some selected employees theoretically become the customers: what would you expect? How would you perceive the new service or product? What else would you like to experience that is missing today? This approach will allow you to innovate for your customers rather than for your company, which will undoubtedly result in the return on investment coming as a consequence of the innovation mindset. But the ROI should not be an objective on its own, and should not be the measure of success in innovation.
- Fear of failing
Another barrier explaining why ROI should not be a measure of success is the fact that innovation can only be successful after failing and trying and re-trying. Innovation projects cannot follow a straight path. Innovation is a winding road, full of discovery, trials and failures, that will probably ruin the true ROI if you were to measure it accurately. The fear of failing is killing innovation. Those who do not fail never try. And those who never try, never innovate. Instead, encourage failure. Exemplify and reward those who try and fail, even if they are not systematically successful, and help them be successful the next time.
Besides encouraging failure, be proactive in helping your employees to learn from their failures, in a constructive and positive way. Build a failure management process where lessons learnt are documented and shared. Not just on a sharepoint though. Organize some live demos and discussions of lessons learnt, with brainstorming on why you failed and what could be done to be successful. The live aspect of the lessons learnt will ensure the employees fully grasp the reasons for the failure, and build a different trajectory the next time.
Also, in order to keep the troops motivated and energetic, ensure that you fail fast and move on. A 2-year project that realizes after 18 months that the objective is not going to be reached is very discouraging, as employees will believe they have wasted their time for 18 months. However, if you have just lost a couple of weeks, or a month, the perception is very different. “Never mind, it was fun, we will try again!” is what is going to resonate in the employees minds. The excitment will grow, the employees will just want to try again, and the appetite to innovate will never stop growing.
- Focus on digital (as opposed to incl. cultural innovation)
Lastly, the fifth barrier that I see to innovation is the fact that some companies understand innovation by digital innovation. If you are just trying to create the new iPhone or the new iPad, of course you have a very slim chance to be successful. Instead, innovation should be seen as a vehicle to work differently, via big or small steps. This is when your company’s culture turns into the real culture of innovation: employees are trying to make simple changes, that, little by little, make a big difference in the way people work and think.
Start by establishing a culture of innovation, where people are encouraged to fail and try, where small ideas are rewarded, where rewards are granted to people for the sake of having ideas, and not necessarily for implementing them. Then, behavior will follow. Put the culture first, the rest will come as a consequence of the mindset.
Also bear in mind that a culture of innovation does not just mean to leave space for those who like to bring in something new every day. A culture of innovation means to accept people for who they are, and the ones who do not like to systematically propose new stuff should maybe just be encouraged for supporting those who do. Build a culture of inclusivity, accepting people how they are – strong and steady innovation is a long-lasting team effort, that requires the more conservative ones to pace the more excited in order to challenge the new ideas and make sure only the realistic ones get implemented. You must ensure the grounded and sometimes reluctant people stay motivated to also support the new ideas down to the end. If you demotivate them constantly, you will end up with plenty of energy for new ideas, but probably also a lack of realism and lots of ideas remaining concepts that never become real – not because they are not good concepts, but because implementation requires some persistence, perseverance and a grounded mindset that lots of creators do not have. You need people with good problem solving skills to be on-board along the way to implement the new ideas, as they are the ones who will confront the real problems on the way to execution. The apparent detractors will help the creators to bring their concepts to reality. Therefore, the company culture should make sure that both personality types – the “excited conceptuals” and the “reluctant practicals” – are accepted, work together, and that there is a good balance between both during innovation discussions.
To conclude, I see these five patterns too often around me: management creating a fence between them and the employees, resulting in innovation ideas not being even brought up; no innovation space visible and available to employees; innovation driven by financials instead of customers expectations; the fear of failing; and the absence of a strong innovation culture, destroying innovative behaviors and missing the complementarity between the grounded and the idealists. As a result, lots of managers totally miss the opportunities lying in front of their eyes, ready to come out of the minds of people sitting just next to them. Is it really what makes the difference between the millennial organizations and the ones staying in the 20th century? Do you see other brakes to innovation around you? And do you see successful innovative companies running against these five pitfalls?
The Process Excellence String of Ariadne 