How to Be a Highly Innovative Company
Innovation isn't just one person's
job. A highly innovative company makes innovation the norm throughout the
organization, from top to bottom.
Watch most organizations operate and
you'll find that innovation typically emerges from one of three sources: From
either the founder/owner (if it's a small business); from similarly small and
informal groups of engaged, frontline employees who grapple with, and solve,
ad-hoc problems on the fly; or from formal project teams which are
specifically convened and mandated to work on a specific problem or issue.
You'd expect, therefore, that truly
outstanding organizations--those that innovate consistently and at a high
level, like, say, Apple, Disney, Nike or Valve--got that way by increasing
those three innovation sources over time.
Interestingly, in most cases, that's
not so.
More often than not, the highly
innovative organization got that way not by iterating its innovative
capabilities one step at a time, one employee at a time, one group or team at a
time, but rather by instilling an all-pervasive, enterprise-wide culture of
innovation--by making a presumption of innovation the norm throughout the
organization, from top to bottom.
Any organization can make this
change. Build an enterprise that lives, eats, sleeps and breathes innovation as
a natural part of its day-to-day activities. Here are three key areas to begin
the process of transformation:
1. Default to cross-functional
teams. In the occasionally-innovative
organization, most opportunities, issues, problems or challenges are addressed,
by default, on an individual or silo-ed basis.
In other words, the person who owns
the challenge or opportunity is expected to solve it. He or she typically does
so either by themselves or by pulling in people from their own team to help.
In consistently-innovative
organizations, the default approach to material opportunities, issues, problems
or challenges is to hand them over to a cross-functional team-- one that
straddles silos and brings a much wider problem-solving perspective. (Note that
highly innovative organizations also know how to prevent those cross-functional
teams bogging down the enterprise by staying short-lived, flexible and
responsive, but that for another post.)
2. Use enterprise-wide
post-mortems. Merely average organizations rarely
analyze their past performance in any meaningful way, and if they do, it's
usually only after something has gone seriously wrong.
Mimic the consistently innovative
organization: when any substantive project or initiative is concluded, take
time to learn lessons from how it was executed. As any good sports coach will
tell you, there is as much to learn from how you succeeded as there is in
uncovering why you failed.
Again, use people from throughout
the organization to conduct the post-mortem, including, most importantly, some
folks who had nothing whatsoever to do with the project (they'll provide the
most objective feedback).
3. Combine 360's with rounded
performance assessments. The
single most striking thing I find when working with truly innovative
organizations is how comfortable their people are with giving honest, unbiased,
zero-agenda feedback to each other--and how good they are at it.
In the average organization, feedback
is a rare bird, and when it is given, it's usually done with hesitancy, a
presumption of ulterior or ill motive, or (again) only after something has gone
wrong. Building a strong, active feedback "muscle" in your
organization is as strong a competitive advantage as a low cost base or a
technological breakthrough, but it does require work.
Start using 360 degree assessments,
administered by a skilled and sensitive provider. The first go-round will be
awkward and may not yield that much by way of useable information, but
subsequent uses will get better and easier as everyone relaxes and understands
that the information they provide isn't being used against them, but rather to
improve how the organization operates.
Build out your performance
assessment process to encompass team- and group-based assessments, not just
one-on-ones. Model the process by inviting all your direct reports to get
involved in your own performance appraisal. And--one last time--make sure the
performance assessment process encompasses success as well as
under-achievement.
Taking these three steps won't make
your company a Nike or a Valve overnight, but it will begin the most important
transformation your organization will ever undergo.
Les McKeown http://www.inc.com/les-mckeown/how-to-be-a-highly-innovative-company.html?cid=em01020week11b&nav=su
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