Posted on November 15, 2011 by Kevin McFarthing
I’m sure you’ve heard the statement – “we’re doing this innovation for strategic reasons”. Quite often “strategic” used in this context as a euphemism for “it’s not going to make any money but we need a reason to justify it”. Strategy should rarely be used as the sole reason or even excuse for innovation. It should always be strategic and make money.
So what is strategic innovation? The short answer is that anything you do in innovation should be rooted in strategy. This applies whether that strategy is total corporate, divisional or functional. Any sensible company should have a view of the markets in which it will compete, where it will source new business e.g. market expansion, share gain, recruiting new users etc. It should reflect on internal competencies and define the battles you can and must win. Once you know that, you can put your innovation priorities into context.
In many companies innovation is seen as something special, over and above routine operations. In those circumstances it is even more important to ask the “why?” question. Anything that disturbs “business as usual” will be greeted with more challenge and skepticism than a simple addition to the manufacturing schedule or another sales promotion. You will need a very clear reason, and that should primarily come from a reason to support the achievement of your strategic goals.
The status of innovation in strategy may be driven by a stated but non-specific need to innovate, and then activities put in place to deliver it. This is wrong. It must be informed by the stated strategic goals of the company. Of course the strategy does not define the detailed rationale and specification for every single project, but each project should make strategic sense. Innovation that is ad hoc is both ineffective and inefficient – meaning you do the wrong things and probably do them wrong as well.
You should also beware of innovation solutions seeking a problem. It is highly unlikely that you would find a strategic match for such a project, so make sure it doesn’t suck valuable resource away from a project that is strategically aligned.
In an ideal world you will have an innovation strategy and plan as a cascade from the overall strategy. Even better, you will include Open Innovation within your innovation strategy, having decided what will be developed inside and what sourced inside.
Very occasionally an innovation opportunity comes along which is so spectacularly attractive that it can influence the strategy. It can provide upside potential beyond most of the options currently under development. In that instance there should be no hesitation on behalf of the project team. They should ensure that agreement is gained to alter the strategy appropriately. Then, once the correct priority is given, the whole company needs to be aligned behind the new initiative, such that the whole “go to market” machine is not only prepared but also motivated.
Last but certainly not least, the people doing the innovation work must be aware of the strategy. Increasingly companies also understand that close external partners, for example core suppliers, also need to know the strategies. If they know, they will be able to bring new ideas aligned with the strategy, as well as being more motivated to work with you to achieve your strategic goals.
This sensible approach ensures that all noses are pointed in the same direction, resources are applied where they will have the biggest impact and the company has the best chance of meeting the objectives of its strategic plan.
http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2011/11/15/is-your-innovation-rooted-in-strategy/
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Devising a Communications Plan for Collaborative Innovation
November 15, 2011, Doug Collins:
Members of a community engaged in the practice of collaborative innovation gain tremendous insights as they pursue that practice through the phases of an enquiry-led campaign. What ideas and insights do we contribute to the question at hand? What have we learned about the practice itself? One commitment that campaign teams make to the community is to create forums and provide the resources to share these insights. In this article Doug Collins suggests an approach by which the campaign team can build a basic communications plan to meet their commitment for sharing relevant information at each phase.
Don’t Change that Channel
I worked in the media industry earlier in my career. The business fascinated me. It enjoyed a rich overabundance of characters and disruptive forces, leavened by a revolving door of thoroughly disruptive characters, who reveled in continually resetting the rules of the game.
One particular fact—or driver—about the business intrigued me. The major broadcast television networks in the U.S. reserve the bulk of their “air” time to promote their own shows (e.g., “Coming up next: Gluten-Free Cooking with Earl Tidmore”). They defer ad revenue to build audiences for their shows. The fact that ubiquitous media brands make this sacrifice signified to me the need for promotion.
I reflect on this fact as I work with people pursuing the practice of collaborative innovation. They often do not come from the world of marketing. As a result, while they accept that promotion plays a role in introducing people to the activity, the questions of how and when and on what basis remain a mystery to start. Likewise, inviting someone with strong marketing and communications skills to join the campaign team can seem like a novel idea in its own right. (I recommend doing so.)
In this article, I share my perspectives on the elements that comprise a basic communications plan for building awareness amongst the people one typically wants to engage during a collaborative innovation campaign. The context is the internal form of enquiry led innovation.
Tooting One’s Horn
The people who promote collaborative innovation within their organization sometimes hesitate to go too far down the path of promoting the activity, choosing instead to issue the occasional status report. Everyone fears becoming the resident spammer. Yet, as our friends in the land of American broadcast learned, it’s wise to assume that people will not instinctively know that the opportunity to participate in the practice is open to them or, if they do have this awareness, on what basis can they engage.
And, if the major networks now compete with thousands of cable and internet channels, you compete for the attention of your community members with a proliferating number of internal initiatives. Many of us walk amongst the weedy walled gardens of proliferating SharePoint portals, for example, which grow like the IT equivalent of kudzu.
Assume that, if you have not spoken in person to a community member about the practice, then they remain unaware. Ultimately, the less people who engage in the critical question facing the organization, the less likely the practice will convene a diverse group that can together build compellingly novel ideas.
Crowd sourcing demands a crowd.
To this end, developing a basic plan requires two insights: insight on your audience and insights on when to engage them. Figure 1 summarizes the following discussion on this front. The responses to the questions shown in the figure would comprise the content of the communications.
Your communications plan—and the engagement it engenders with community members—will deepen with each campaign.
Figure 1: the critical questions that drive communications by campaign phase
The Who
The audience one targets in a campaign consists of the following people:
The executive sponsor: the person who convenes the community and commits to engaging in developing and sponsoring the ideas that resonate.
The campaign team members: the people who commit to engaging with the community and working with the executive sponsor to realize the potential of the members’ ideas.
The contributors: the people within the community who share their insights.
The community members: the people who the executive sponsor convenes to share their perspective on the critical question.
The campaign itself typically ebbs and flows through the following phases over weeks to months.
The enquiry: the question is posed to the community; the people are invited to share their insights on it.
The exploration: the community as a whole reflects and builds one another’s ideas, some of which resonate more than others.
The resolution: the community, the campaign team, and the sponsor come to an understanding about which ideas to pursue beyond the bounds of the fuzzy front end of innovation.
A Day in the Life of a Campaign
With the above definitions in mind, let’s look at the essential elements that comprise the communications plan.
The Enquiry
During the enquiry phase, the primary communication is from the sponsor to the community at large. The community members seek perspective on the nature of the enquiry (i.e., What question do we explore?), the nature of the engagement (i.e., What opportunities do we have to pursue the question?), along with guidance on timing and logistics (e.g., When can we participate and do we convene at certain times?).
Often, the sponsor communicates this insight to signal both their approval and commitment to pursue the enquiry within the community. The sponsor signals that, yes, community members can embrace the practice of collaborative innovation as their day job.
The Exploration
This phase of the campaign offers incredible opportunities for the members to share their perspective on both the activity itself and the insights they have contributed, relative to the question at hand. Campaign teams will at times focus their energy on communicating logistical or statistical information (e.g., “12 ideas were contributed this week: keep up the good work”). Doing so represents an opportunity lost. Instead, the campaign team should do some exploration by engaging with and interviewing the members who have contributed. What did they find compelling about the enquiry? What reservations did they have about contributing? What commitment do they make to pursue their idea further?
In this sense, your communications plan offers a powerful opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the thinking that motivates people to contribute. Share that perspective with your community, first and foremost. This form of engagement also serves as an intrinsic reward for contributors.
The Resolution
During the resolution phase the communication turns to the members of the community whose ideas have resonated. Specifically, the campaign team engages in dialogue with the contributors to explore the possibilities of pursuing the idea either to the next, concept phase or, at times, to implementation in the near term. Here, the critical task for the campaign team is to continue the dialogue with their individual contributors while keeping the community at large up to date on the resolution process.
What next steps, under the guidance of the sponsor, will the contributors take? Have some contributors decided to pursue their ideas, regardless? If so, do they seek further input or help from the community?
Keep in mind for your communications and for your campaign overall that one sure sign that the organization is embracing the practice of collaborative innovation is when members decide to pursue their ideas, regardless of whether they secured formal sponsorship. Highlight these occurrences, as they represent authentic forms of innovation and personal expressions of leadership.
Final Food for Thought
Your communications plan should mirror the cycle of the enquiry led form of collaborative innovation. In the early days—the enquiry—focus on awareness in order to engage fully as diverse a community as possible. Build the crowd.
During the exploration phase focus your communications on exploring the insights and ideas those community members contribute. Frame your own set of questions to them on how they, in turn, approached the critical question, or enquiry, facing the organization. Share the sponsor’s perspective on which ideas resonate, as well. The practice of collaborative innovation invites all parties to engage.
In the past, people whose organizations have pursued wholesale change initiatives have found themselves on the receiving end of an enormous amount of top-down communications. Experience showed that the initiatives—and the associated approach to communications—were largely failures. The practice of collaborative innovation turns the tables on this timeworn approach. Here the campaign team’s communications serve as a forum for the members to share their perspectives.
Lastly, in the resolution phase, help the contributors whose ideas resonate, along with the community at large, make meaning of next steps and application areas.
Develop a communications plan that allows the campaign team to share enquiries that relate to each phase of the campaign. Reject the easy route of sharing the occasional logistical tidbit, only. The commitment you make to the community requires more.
http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2011/11/15/devising-a-communications-plan-for-collaborative-innovation/
Why Small Companies Have the Innovation Advantage
BY Sam Hogg http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220558
When I first started my company, I hit the business plan competition circuit for funding and feedback. At each event, I encountered the same question from a judge or a member of the audience: "This seems pretty simple, why doesn't [insert large competitor] just do this?" My response was always the same: "I don't know--they just don't." The answer was always oddly sufficient, probably because the asker had no idea either.
That question ultimately became rhetorical, in the eventual sale of my company and in general observations on how big companies and startups act. Why do large companies more successfully acquire instead of innovate? They certainly have the talent, the money and the existing market share to launch startups with ease, yet they don't do it very well. What's clearly missing is something in their DNA, but also something in the numbers. As big companies look at growing internally or via a shopping spree, it's important to consider the underlying motivations and math.
People and culture: Startups require innovative entrepreneurs, and that typically isn't in a job description for a large company. Big companies hire people when the workload demands it, not when they can come up for air and think about innovation.
By the same token, people work for big companies when they want a stable paycheck, an eight-hour workday and projects lined up on their desk. Mechanically, the ability to break away from a billable workload to pursue something innovative requires significant buy-in and resources from managers. Those managers are likely evaluated by their higher-ups on the profitability of existing, not future, business.
Cost and organizational structure: Large companies simply can't compete with startups on a cost and execution basis. Organizational hierarchies slow decisions that could be made over lunch or beers in a startup, and established salaries and service providers create costs that would bury almost any early stage company. While startups beg, borrow and barter, large companies follow established processes, protocol and prices to accomplish the same things at a much slower speed and a heavy multiple of the cost.
Risk: Unfortunately, all of those extra dollars and time spent do little to mitigate the risks of the actual concepts and, unlike startups, big companies have a lot to lose. Failed internal ventures not only hurt the balance sheet, but the corporate brand companies invest significant resources in building and protecting. The only risk in acquiring established and derisked companies is overpaying. That premium debatably trumps the risk of having several internal failures to get something right. Like everything else in business, it boils down to math--mainly probability and statistics.
For instance, if a large company knows it could replicate a startup concept for $1 million, but only has a 33 percent chance of competing successfully long term, it could mathematically justify waiting around to pay $3 million for the derisked version. This allows it to leave the founding, flailing and failing to entrepreneurs, and acquire the company and competition in one fell swoop--no disruption to current projects, no need to retain internal innovators on payroll and no reason to change the corporate machine that put them in the acquiring position in the first place. No-brainer.
So why is this important? Knowing why big companies buy little ones is critical to positioning and pricing a company for an acquisition. Large companies are cash heavy and innovation poor, and when they seemingly sit on the sidelines, chances are they aren't being dumb, they are just doing the math. Making sure your company fits their price and formula requires thinking like they do.
It would be easy to just abandon a startup altogether because a bigger company could compete with it. Instead, knowing the innovation challenges of large companies transforms them from competitors into strategic acquirers. Building startups right in the wheelhouse of potential competitors isn't stupid--it's smart. And next time I'm asked why a competitor isn't replicating my concept, I'll confidently answer this way: "Because they are waiting to buy me."
When I first started my company, I hit the business plan competition circuit for funding and feedback. At each event, I encountered the same question from a judge or a member of the audience: "This seems pretty simple, why doesn't [insert large competitor] just do this?" My response was always the same: "I don't know--they just don't." The answer was always oddly sufficient, probably because the asker had no idea either.
That question ultimately became rhetorical, in the eventual sale of my company and in general observations on how big companies and startups act. Why do large companies more successfully acquire instead of innovate? They certainly have the talent, the money and the existing market share to launch startups with ease, yet they don't do it very well. What's clearly missing is something in their DNA, but also something in the numbers. As big companies look at growing internally or via a shopping spree, it's important to consider the underlying motivations and math.
People and culture: Startups require innovative entrepreneurs, and that typically isn't in a job description for a large company. Big companies hire people when the workload demands it, not when they can come up for air and think about innovation.
By the same token, people work for big companies when they want a stable paycheck, an eight-hour workday and projects lined up on their desk. Mechanically, the ability to break away from a billable workload to pursue something innovative requires significant buy-in and resources from managers. Those managers are likely evaluated by their higher-ups on the profitability of existing, not future, business.
Cost and organizational structure: Large companies simply can't compete with startups on a cost and execution basis. Organizational hierarchies slow decisions that could be made over lunch or beers in a startup, and established salaries and service providers create costs that would bury almost any early stage company. While startups beg, borrow and barter, large companies follow established processes, protocol and prices to accomplish the same things at a much slower speed and a heavy multiple of the cost.
Risk: Unfortunately, all of those extra dollars and time spent do little to mitigate the risks of the actual concepts and, unlike startups, big companies have a lot to lose. Failed internal ventures not only hurt the balance sheet, but the corporate brand companies invest significant resources in building and protecting. The only risk in acquiring established and derisked companies is overpaying. That premium debatably trumps the risk of having several internal failures to get something right. Like everything else in business, it boils down to math--mainly probability and statistics.
For instance, if a large company knows it could replicate a startup concept for $1 million, but only has a 33 percent chance of competing successfully long term, it could mathematically justify waiting around to pay $3 million for the derisked version. This allows it to leave the founding, flailing and failing to entrepreneurs, and acquire the company and competition in one fell swoop--no disruption to current projects, no need to retain internal innovators on payroll and no reason to change the corporate machine that put them in the acquiring position in the first place. No-brainer.
So why is this important? Knowing why big companies buy little ones is critical to positioning and pricing a company for an acquisition. Large companies are cash heavy and innovation poor, and when they seemingly sit on the sidelines, chances are they aren't being dumb, they are just doing the math. Making sure your company fits their price and formula requires thinking like they do.
It would be easy to just abandon a startup altogether because a bigger company could compete with it. Instead, knowing the innovation challenges of large companies transforms them from competitors into strategic acquirers. Building startups right in the wheelhouse of potential competitors isn't stupid--it's smart. And next time I'm asked why a competitor isn't replicating my concept, I'll confidently answer this way: "Because they are waiting to buy me."
Innovation Requires Culture of Trust and Openness
Posted on November 13, 2011 by Jim Clemmer
“One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.” — Henry Ford, early 20th century American automobile pioneer
The environment of most organizations is too poisonous for innovation and organizational learning to flourish. A mistake is generally a CLM — career-limiting move. Making a mistake in front of many managers is like cutting yourself in front of Dracula. So people become defensive. They cover up problems, set backs, and missed goals. When people in closed, mistake-averse organizations encounter problems, they immediately go to work on fixing. . . the blame. Everyone becomes so busy denying mistakes that they can’t possibly learn from them.
There’s a direct and strong relationship between organization trust and innovation. If I feel that management is just waiting for me to trip up so they can put a big black mark beside my name, why would I risk trying something new? It’s far safer to be a critic. I can take critical shots at meetings and write memos pointing out how imperfectly other people have done things that I am too afraid to even try.
I can establish a wonderful batting average by reducing my trips to the plate to only those times I am facing a very weak pitcher. Why would I give a new idea a clumsy try if I think that anything less than a total success would be frowned on?
If we want more experimentation and learning on our teams or organizations, we must establish an atmosphere that builds self-confidence and trust. Trust is extraordinarily fragile. Building it is a subtle, long-term process. It doesn’t come from what we say — like telling people to trust us or talking about trust as a core value.
Trust is built or destroyed by what we do. How are mistakes treated? How much experimenting do we personally model and encourage in others? Who gets rewarded and recognized for what behavior? What management support systems and processes are in place? How much and what type of skills are developed and for whom? What information is shared, by whom, and with whom? Do we keep your promises? Do we truly live according to our values? How clear and consistent are our goals and priorities?
These are just some of the trust issues. But as we contemplate our answers to these questions, the most important question of all is how do we know? We need to ask those people whose trust we need to build how they would answer these questions. To get their truthful responses — and lay the foundation for trust building — let them answer anonymously.
A big cause of team and organization learning impairments is lack of openness. As mistakes are made, pilot tests run, and tries clumsily attempted learning occurs. Unless those results are openly and widely shared, everyone is reduced to learning only from their own experiences. That’s an expensive waste of time and resources. We need active internal networks and processes for sharing all that rich learning experience. But these are only useful if we have a high level of trust within a culture that sees mistakes as opportunities to advance the team or organization’s learning.
http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2011/11/13/innovation-requires-culture-of-trust-and-openness/
“One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.” — Henry Ford, early 20th century American automobile pioneer
The environment of most organizations is too poisonous for innovation and organizational learning to flourish. A mistake is generally a CLM — career-limiting move. Making a mistake in front of many managers is like cutting yourself in front of Dracula. So people become defensive. They cover up problems, set backs, and missed goals. When people in closed, mistake-averse organizations encounter problems, they immediately go to work on fixing. . . the blame. Everyone becomes so busy denying mistakes that they can’t possibly learn from them.
There’s a direct and strong relationship between organization trust and innovation. If I feel that management is just waiting for me to trip up so they can put a big black mark beside my name, why would I risk trying something new? It’s far safer to be a critic. I can take critical shots at meetings and write memos pointing out how imperfectly other people have done things that I am too afraid to even try.
I can establish a wonderful batting average by reducing my trips to the plate to only those times I am facing a very weak pitcher. Why would I give a new idea a clumsy try if I think that anything less than a total success would be frowned on?
If we want more experimentation and learning on our teams or organizations, we must establish an atmosphere that builds self-confidence and trust. Trust is extraordinarily fragile. Building it is a subtle, long-term process. It doesn’t come from what we say — like telling people to trust us or talking about trust as a core value.
Trust is built or destroyed by what we do. How are mistakes treated? How much experimenting do we personally model and encourage in others? Who gets rewarded and recognized for what behavior? What management support systems and processes are in place? How much and what type of skills are developed and for whom? What information is shared, by whom, and with whom? Do we keep your promises? Do we truly live according to our values? How clear and consistent are our goals and priorities?
These are just some of the trust issues. But as we contemplate our answers to these questions, the most important question of all is how do we know? We need to ask those people whose trust we need to build how they would answer these questions. To get their truthful responses — and lay the foundation for trust building — let them answer anonymously.
A big cause of team and organization learning impairments is lack of openness. As mistakes are made, pilot tests run, and tries clumsily attempted learning occurs. Unless those results are openly and widely shared, everyone is reduced to learning only from their own experiences. That’s an expensive waste of time and resources. We need active internal networks and processes for sharing all that rich learning experience. But these are only useful if we have a high level of trust within a culture that sees mistakes as opportunities to advance the team or organization’s learning.
http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2011/11/13/innovation-requires-culture-of-trust-and-openness/
Why experimenting & prototyping is so important to innovation
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Innovation's limiting factor
Ask anyone what limits innovation and they'll have a hundred different answers - unsupportive management, uncertain goals, unrealistic resource allocation, and many, many more. What's more, each of these, in their own way, are obstacles to innovation. But what ultimately sets the speed and capability of your organization when it comes to innovation is your ability to experiment, prototype and introduce the learning from experimenting and prototyping back into idea development quickly.
Even if you have all the resources you need, all the support you need and all the management support you can stand, your innovation pace will still be dictated by how rapidly you can experiment and prototype new ideas, and how quickly you can react to what you've learned. Plenty of firms have plenty of support for innovation, but are unable or simply don't have the experience to conduct short, rapid experiments with less than perfect prototypes.
Why is experimenting and prototyping so important? No idea is perfect from its first documentation and capture. Ideas must develop and must be exposed to real world situations in order to hone the value proposition and correct unseen flaws that often aren't exposed until the idea is presented to potential customers. Most organizations skip this step, or conversely, take far too long to conduct the experimentation, substituting more market research for simply placing a prototype in front of the customer.
Rapid experimentation leads to a lot of learning and new insights, but it also means that some experiments and prototypes will be crash-test dummies - that is, they were developed for learning and proved a point. Their success is based on the fact we validated a problem or discovered, like Edison, how not to do something. This isn't failure, it's learning and validation. Perhaps if we framed it that way, more organizations would spend more time experimenting and prototyping. because these two functions dictate a significant amount of the speed with which your firm can innovate.
Most firms need to learn that rapid, messy, inexact experimenting, iterating to get it just right, is far more valuable than slow, careful, perfect experiments that only validate what we expected. Innovation should solve unmet or unexpected needs and opportunities, therefore the results of the experiment should also be uncertain and unexpected. And as fast as is possible, because ultimately this sets the drumbeat for innovation in your business.
Innovation's limiting factor
Ask anyone what limits innovation and they'll have a hundred different answers - unsupportive management, uncertain goals, unrealistic resource allocation, and many, many more. What's more, each of these, in their own way, are obstacles to innovation. But what ultimately sets the speed and capability of your organization when it comes to innovation is your ability to experiment, prototype and introduce the learning from experimenting and prototyping back into idea development quickly.
Even if you have all the resources you need, all the support you need and all the management support you can stand, your innovation pace will still be dictated by how rapidly you can experiment and prototype new ideas, and how quickly you can react to what you've learned. Plenty of firms have plenty of support for innovation, but are unable or simply don't have the experience to conduct short, rapid experiments with less than perfect prototypes.
Why is experimenting and prototyping so important? No idea is perfect from its first documentation and capture. Ideas must develop and must be exposed to real world situations in order to hone the value proposition and correct unseen flaws that often aren't exposed until the idea is presented to potential customers. Most organizations skip this step, or conversely, take far too long to conduct the experimentation, substituting more market research for simply placing a prototype in front of the customer.
Rapid experimentation leads to a lot of learning and new insights, but it also means that some experiments and prototypes will be crash-test dummies - that is, they were developed for learning and proved a point. Their success is based on the fact we validated a problem or discovered, like Edison, how not to do something. This isn't failure, it's learning and validation. Perhaps if we framed it that way, more organizations would spend more time experimenting and prototyping. because these two functions dictate a significant amount of the speed with which your firm can innovate.
Most firms need to learn that rapid, messy, inexact experimenting, iterating to get it just right, is far more valuable than slow, careful, perfect experiments that only validate what we expected. Innovation should solve unmet or unexpected needs and opportunities, therefore the results of the experiment should also be uncertain and unexpected. And as fast as is possible, because ultimately this sets the drumbeat for innovation in your business.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
The DNA of Innovation and Why Every Company Needs an Innovation Budget
The DNA of Innovation
Posted on November 11, 2011 by John Persico
The DNA of innovation is an idea. Nothing happens until someone has an idea. However all ideas are not opportunities. The secret of innovation lies in changing ideas into opportunities and acting on those opportunities. Not very many organizations know how to do this well. The fundamental problem of organizations is that they are idea phobic. The following situation illustrates what I mean by being idea phobic.
A number of years ago when I was consulting with Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard (PHNS), I asked about their employee suggestion system. I wanted to see what they were doing to get ideas from the average shipyard worker. PHNS had one they called the Beneficial Suggestion Systems Program. Such programs are commonplace in American Industry. However, the employees referred to it as the “Benny Sucks Program.” The year that I was there (1991), 287 suggestions had been submitted. There were nearly 15,000 employees at the Shipyard for a ratio of 1 suggestion per every 52 employees. The employees informed me that it might take up to three years to learn whether or not an improvement idea had been accepted. There was a management review team that was formed to review and accept ideas that met definite criteria. Management then had to decide “how much” an idea was worth. This cumbersome process was loathed by both managers and workers alike. It was a classic example of what I call an “exclusive” system for innovation and suggestions. In such a system, the main idea is to exclude as many ideas as possible. As one manager informed me, we already have too many ideas and not enough hands. The system was regarded as one big pain in the neck. This was a typically “idea phobic” system.
In contrast, the next year, I visited a Sony plant in Japan. There were approximately 20,000 employees at this plant and they averaged about 140,000 ideas a year. This is a ratio of 7 ideas per each employee or nearly 365 times the ratio that existed at PHNS. In the Japanese system, ideas could be immediately implemented by employees and almost immediately receive some small token of financial reinforcement. More extensive ideas would have a longer review but in most cases, they would be approved and implemented by worker teams and also receive a slightly larger financial reward. The Japanese system is what I call an inclusive system and its goal is to include as many ideas as possible.
In an inclusive system, workers are empowered to implement their own ideas and there is no shortage of labor for tackling innovative ideas. I remember a manager from the Sony plant telling me that they had a budget for ideas of about two million dollars a year but that the ideas that were implemented resulted in savings of about seven million dollars a year. Not a bad return for the investment. Furthermore, the system of financial reimbursement is what is known in the psychological parlance as “intermittent reinforcement” and it is much more powerful than large amounts of rewards that are seldom if ever seen by most employees. This is an idea friendly system.
Many of the articles that are in this forum talk about the need to develop innovative organizations. There is widespread agreement that companies must be innovative to survive today. Nevertheless, in my consulting, most of the companies that I see simply pay lip service to innovation. Innovation is still a top down process and too often regarded as simply another burden for management. Most companies are “idea phobic” and do as much as they can to sabotage the transformation of ideas into opportunities. We are all familiar with the litany of arguments often used to prove why an idea would “never work here.”
Companies can go out of their way to create incentives for innovation but unless innovation is built into the very fabric of the system, the innovations will seldom be implemented. One way to do this is by designing a system that rewards and incentivizes innovation at every level of the organization. From the macro level to the micro level, innovation must become granular and democratic. It must be everyone’s responsibility to be innovative and to implement innovation.
The solution to this problem lies in the design of the system to support innovation. An idea or innovation inclusive system can be created by first understanding and secondly deploying the following six principles:
1. The more ideas the better
2. Everyone is an innovator implementor
3. Base hits will give you more runs than swinging for the bleachers
4. Innovation is an investment, share the wealth
5. Not all ideas can be translated into measurable returns
6. Management’s role is to create the conditions for innovation to bloom
The more ideas the better:
This sounds like an oxymoron, yet how often have I heard it said that we already have too many ideas around here. Supervisors cringe when employees come to them with “suggestions” for change or how things could be done differently. The reason for this is simple. Managers see ideas as inextricably linked to “MORE” work. Given that there are only so many hours in the week, how can more work be done in the same time span? More ideas = more work = more stress. People try to avoid stress. Thus people will avoid new ideas. If this is how your system works, no amount of exhortation for “more innovation” or thinking out of the box is going to make one bit of difference. You can say you have an “innovation system” but your idea phobia will simply sabotage all of your efforts. In such systems, all you will hear are the typical innovation killers like “we tried that years ago and it did not work.” Amazing how creative people can be when they want to reject an idea.
Everyone is an innovator implementor:
The secret here is to delegate, delegate, delegate. The problem may seem that most managers do not know how to delegate. Actually, they know quite well how to delegate and that is the real problem. “What, delegate my job, then what will become of me in the next round of corporate downsizings?” We must stay busy, we must look busy, we must be busy. Busy trumps innovation any day of the week. Busy gets rewarded with more pay and that all important job security. Innovation may or may not get a pat on the back and a bonus someplace down the line, but only if you are still working. Most supervisors will choose busy over innovation. Thus, we have the prime dilemma. If I delegate new ideas for improving things, I may put myself out of a job. However, if I do not delegate new ideas, there is not enough time for me to do everything that I already have on my plate. The solution! Bury as many new ideas as I can as quickly as I can. It would not pay to let senior management see that we have a lot of ideas for improvement that are not being implemented.
The real solution is actually fairly obvious. We need to measure our systems and the success of our managers not by how busy they are but by how much innovation they are capable of introducing into their work areas or work processes. Innovation can be charted for the system and managers (just like coaches) should be evaluated on how well their systems are performing against these innovation metrics. I have created many novel metrics for measuring innovation that blend the novel with the traditional. It only takes a little creativity to develop some “ratios’ for innovation.
Base hits will give you more runs than swinging for the bleachers:
Good Americans love our home run hitters. We revel in the player that knocks the ball right out of the ball park. The lowly runner who simply gets to first base is not nearly as applauded. Bigger is always better in America. We build the biggest houses, the biggest cars, the biggest motorcycles and the most elaborate performance management systems in the world. Our systems are designed to identify the “home run” ideas and try to figure out how much such ideas are worth. We worry about giving too much moola out and creating dissention but on the other hand, we feel that unless great ideas are rewarded greatly, we will not have much innovation. It is as though most managers have never heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy or any of the primary principles of reinforcement theory. We can summarize these very simply:
1. Small regular reinforcements widely distributed on a timely basis will create more innovation than a large single reinforcement on an untimely basis. By timely, I mean that there is a very short time span between the idea and the reinforcement. Think slot machine. Think poker.
2. Most people will be happy to get a pat on the back and a simple letter that says thank you for the first idea. For each subsequent idea, a small remuneration will be greatly appreciated and will keep the ideas flowing. Several cash cards or coffee at Starbucks cards will work better than many letters from the president.
3. Big ideas are like big fish. They are at the top of the food chain. However, the biggest whales in the sea survive because of the millions of tiny animals that we can barely see called plankton.
The bottom line here is to work on rewarding the base hits with small frequent symbols that are attractive to people and reflect Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Of course, you do not want to ignore the homeruns, but if that is all you reward then you will find that you have a losing innovation system. No team ever won the World Series because of its home run hitters. Barry Bonds considered the greatest homerun hitter of all time (steroid use ignored here) played in several World Series but he was never on a team that won a World Series. There are many fewer whales in the sea than there are plankton.
Innovation is an investment, share the wealth:
Does your organization have a budget for innovation rewards? Many organizations have an R & D department where the innovation is assigned to engineers or other specialists. Often these individuals are rewarded for developing new patents or products. However, what about the average employee? Are they simply an afterthought? Do you regard your average employee as someone who can be an innovator? If so, how much of your budget do you allocate to rewarding employees for ideas above and beyond their responsibilities.
Not having a budget for innovation, is like not having a budget for anything else you need in the organization. No budget, no results. A budget for innovation should be treated like an investment. All investments entail a degree of risk but prudent investments pay off in dividends that hopefully outweigh the initial investment. You should track this budget and your returns on innovation just as well as you track any other financial investments your company undertakes. Again, there are many creative metrics that can be developed for calculating ROI, return on innovation.
Not all ideas can be translated into measurable returns:
Here we appear to have a major stumbling block. How do we reward ideas that cannot be measured by financial returns? The usual answer is to weed such ideas out and assume they were not worth anything. Unfortunately, this solution overlooks the pride and ownership that many people have with their ideas. For instance, if your young child came to you with a drawing that they did and they were very proud of it, but you could not quite recognize what it was, would you say “This is not worth doing, go back and try again” I hope not. Dr. Deming used to say that the most important things in life were immeasurable. His typical example was the loss of a prized customer. What would that cost your organization? You know it will cost a great deal but the exact cost is unknown and unknowable.
Perhaps for every idea that results in measurable cost savings there are ten that will not. Should you simply garbage can these ideas? I say no. Treat them as you would any other well intentioned effort to help the organization. Reward all ideas, large and small and even those you think are worthless. The point is to create an inclusive system that weeds ideas in and does not weed ideas out. This is a true innovation system. The more ideas weeded in, the more opportunities you will find and the more innovation you will have.
Management’s role is to create the conditions for innovation to bloom:
One day a manager asked me to visit his maintenance depot on third shift to find out why production was lagging there. I came in about midnight and met the nights shift supervisor. I introduced myself and told him that the VP of Operations had sent me to find out how I could help improve performance. The supervisor was indignant. He said, “Do you want to find out how to improve performance, come with me and I will show you.” I followed him down a set of stairs and into a large warehouse that was very dark. I asked him where we were and he said this was where they kept the extra supplies they needed to do their work. I asked him why the lights were out and he laughed. He informed me that they turned the power off after second shift to save money. I asked him how he found the parts they needed and he pulled a Bic lighter out of his pocket, flicked it a few times and then stuck it in my face. “This is how I find the parts” he said. “Tell them to turn the damn lights on and I can increase productivity.”
During my 20 years of consulting, I have found countless examples of productivity barriers that management either created or failed to remove. Deming continually reiterated that it was management’s job to take the barriers out of the system to allow the worker to improve and perform at a higher level. If you have the brakes on in your car, no amount of revving the engine will make the car go faster. The solution is to take the brakes off. Indeed, it is the only solution. Slogans and exhortations for productivity and innovation are worthless. Barriers in the system will block the best of efforts any day of the week. Furthermore, these barriers eventually create at best apathy and at worst contempt for the organizations mission and goals.
Organizations and life in general are imperfect systems. Barriers, obstacles, roadblocks, pitfalls, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and floods are a part of life. Each day we must motivate ourselves and others to start all over again removing the barriers of today. Tomorrow there will be more barriers. Life is a never-ending series of barriers. Management’s job is to remove the barriers or give more responsibility to employees to remove the barriers that they encounter. Using a Bic as a flash lighter is not the best way to illuminate a supply warehouse. If you truly want to develop a system for changing ideas into opportunities, you must be prepared for a daily systemic effort to identify and remove the innumerable barriers that exit to innovation in your organization.
Posted on November 11, 2011 by John Persico
The DNA of innovation is an idea. Nothing happens until someone has an idea. However all ideas are not opportunities. The secret of innovation lies in changing ideas into opportunities and acting on those opportunities. Not very many organizations know how to do this well. The fundamental problem of organizations is that they are idea phobic. The following situation illustrates what I mean by being idea phobic.
A number of years ago when I was consulting with Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard (PHNS), I asked about their employee suggestion system. I wanted to see what they were doing to get ideas from the average shipyard worker. PHNS had one they called the Beneficial Suggestion Systems Program. Such programs are commonplace in American Industry. However, the employees referred to it as the “Benny Sucks Program.” The year that I was there (1991), 287 suggestions had been submitted. There were nearly 15,000 employees at the Shipyard for a ratio of 1 suggestion per every 52 employees. The employees informed me that it might take up to three years to learn whether or not an improvement idea had been accepted. There was a management review team that was formed to review and accept ideas that met definite criteria. Management then had to decide “how much” an idea was worth. This cumbersome process was loathed by both managers and workers alike. It was a classic example of what I call an “exclusive” system for innovation and suggestions. In such a system, the main idea is to exclude as many ideas as possible. As one manager informed me, we already have too many ideas and not enough hands. The system was regarded as one big pain in the neck. This was a typically “idea phobic” system.
In contrast, the next year, I visited a Sony plant in Japan. There were approximately 20,000 employees at this plant and they averaged about 140,000 ideas a year. This is a ratio of 7 ideas per each employee or nearly 365 times the ratio that existed at PHNS. In the Japanese system, ideas could be immediately implemented by employees and almost immediately receive some small token of financial reinforcement. More extensive ideas would have a longer review but in most cases, they would be approved and implemented by worker teams and also receive a slightly larger financial reward. The Japanese system is what I call an inclusive system and its goal is to include as many ideas as possible.
In an inclusive system, workers are empowered to implement their own ideas and there is no shortage of labor for tackling innovative ideas. I remember a manager from the Sony plant telling me that they had a budget for ideas of about two million dollars a year but that the ideas that were implemented resulted in savings of about seven million dollars a year. Not a bad return for the investment. Furthermore, the system of financial reimbursement is what is known in the psychological parlance as “intermittent reinforcement” and it is much more powerful than large amounts of rewards that are seldom if ever seen by most employees. This is an idea friendly system.
Many of the articles that are in this forum talk about the need to develop innovative organizations. There is widespread agreement that companies must be innovative to survive today. Nevertheless, in my consulting, most of the companies that I see simply pay lip service to innovation. Innovation is still a top down process and too often regarded as simply another burden for management. Most companies are “idea phobic” and do as much as they can to sabotage the transformation of ideas into opportunities. We are all familiar with the litany of arguments often used to prove why an idea would “never work here.”
Companies can go out of their way to create incentives for innovation but unless innovation is built into the very fabric of the system, the innovations will seldom be implemented. One way to do this is by designing a system that rewards and incentivizes innovation at every level of the organization. From the macro level to the micro level, innovation must become granular and democratic. It must be everyone’s responsibility to be innovative and to implement innovation.
The solution to this problem lies in the design of the system to support innovation. An idea or innovation inclusive system can be created by first understanding and secondly deploying the following six principles:
1. The more ideas the better
2. Everyone is an innovator implementor
3. Base hits will give you more runs than swinging for the bleachers
4. Innovation is an investment, share the wealth
5. Not all ideas can be translated into measurable returns
6. Management’s role is to create the conditions for innovation to bloom
The more ideas the better:
This sounds like an oxymoron, yet how often have I heard it said that we already have too many ideas around here. Supervisors cringe when employees come to them with “suggestions” for change or how things could be done differently. The reason for this is simple. Managers see ideas as inextricably linked to “MORE” work. Given that there are only so many hours in the week, how can more work be done in the same time span? More ideas = more work = more stress. People try to avoid stress. Thus people will avoid new ideas. If this is how your system works, no amount of exhortation for “more innovation” or thinking out of the box is going to make one bit of difference. You can say you have an “innovation system” but your idea phobia will simply sabotage all of your efforts. In such systems, all you will hear are the typical innovation killers like “we tried that years ago and it did not work.” Amazing how creative people can be when they want to reject an idea.
Everyone is an innovator implementor:
The secret here is to delegate, delegate, delegate. The problem may seem that most managers do not know how to delegate. Actually, they know quite well how to delegate and that is the real problem. “What, delegate my job, then what will become of me in the next round of corporate downsizings?” We must stay busy, we must look busy, we must be busy. Busy trumps innovation any day of the week. Busy gets rewarded with more pay and that all important job security. Innovation may or may not get a pat on the back and a bonus someplace down the line, but only if you are still working. Most supervisors will choose busy over innovation. Thus, we have the prime dilemma. If I delegate new ideas for improving things, I may put myself out of a job. However, if I do not delegate new ideas, there is not enough time for me to do everything that I already have on my plate. The solution! Bury as many new ideas as I can as quickly as I can. It would not pay to let senior management see that we have a lot of ideas for improvement that are not being implemented.
The real solution is actually fairly obvious. We need to measure our systems and the success of our managers not by how busy they are but by how much innovation they are capable of introducing into their work areas or work processes. Innovation can be charted for the system and managers (just like coaches) should be evaluated on how well their systems are performing against these innovation metrics. I have created many novel metrics for measuring innovation that blend the novel with the traditional. It only takes a little creativity to develop some “ratios’ for innovation.
Base hits will give you more runs than swinging for the bleachers:
Good Americans love our home run hitters. We revel in the player that knocks the ball right out of the ball park. The lowly runner who simply gets to first base is not nearly as applauded. Bigger is always better in America. We build the biggest houses, the biggest cars, the biggest motorcycles and the most elaborate performance management systems in the world. Our systems are designed to identify the “home run” ideas and try to figure out how much such ideas are worth. We worry about giving too much moola out and creating dissention but on the other hand, we feel that unless great ideas are rewarded greatly, we will not have much innovation. It is as though most managers have never heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy or any of the primary principles of reinforcement theory. We can summarize these very simply:
1. Small regular reinforcements widely distributed on a timely basis will create more innovation than a large single reinforcement on an untimely basis. By timely, I mean that there is a very short time span between the idea and the reinforcement. Think slot machine. Think poker.
2. Most people will be happy to get a pat on the back and a simple letter that says thank you for the first idea. For each subsequent idea, a small remuneration will be greatly appreciated and will keep the ideas flowing. Several cash cards or coffee at Starbucks cards will work better than many letters from the president.
3. Big ideas are like big fish. They are at the top of the food chain. However, the biggest whales in the sea survive because of the millions of tiny animals that we can barely see called plankton.
The bottom line here is to work on rewarding the base hits with small frequent symbols that are attractive to people and reflect Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Of course, you do not want to ignore the homeruns, but if that is all you reward then you will find that you have a losing innovation system. No team ever won the World Series because of its home run hitters. Barry Bonds considered the greatest homerun hitter of all time (steroid use ignored here) played in several World Series but he was never on a team that won a World Series. There are many fewer whales in the sea than there are plankton.
Innovation is an investment, share the wealth:
Does your organization have a budget for innovation rewards? Many organizations have an R & D department where the innovation is assigned to engineers or other specialists. Often these individuals are rewarded for developing new patents or products. However, what about the average employee? Are they simply an afterthought? Do you regard your average employee as someone who can be an innovator? If so, how much of your budget do you allocate to rewarding employees for ideas above and beyond their responsibilities.
Not having a budget for innovation, is like not having a budget for anything else you need in the organization. No budget, no results. A budget for innovation should be treated like an investment. All investments entail a degree of risk but prudent investments pay off in dividends that hopefully outweigh the initial investment. You should track this budget and your returns on innovation just as well as you track any other financial investments your company undertakes. Again, there are many creative metrics that can be developed for calculating ROI, return on innovation.
Not all ideas can be translated into measurable returns:
Here we appear to have a major stumbling block. How do we reward ideas that cannot be measured by financial returns? The usual answer is to weed such ideas out and assume they were not worth anything. Unfortunately, this solution overlooks the pride and ownership that many people have with their ideas. For instance, if your young child came to you with a drawing that they did and they were very proud of it, but you could not quite recognize what it was, would you say “This is not worth doing, go back and try again” I hope not. Dr. Deming used to say that the most important things in life were immeasurable. His typical example was the loss of a prized customer. What would that cost your organization? You know it will cost a great deal but the exact cost is unknown and unknowable.
Perhaps for every idea that results in measurable cost savings there are ten that will not. Should you simply garbage can these ideas? I say no. Treat them as you would any other well intentioned effort to help the organization. Reward all ideas, large and small and even those you think are worthless. The point is to create an inclusive system that weeds ideas in and does not weed ideas out. This is a true innovation system. The more ideas weeded in, the more opportunities you will find and the more innovation you will have.
Management’s role is to create the conditions for innovation to bloom:
One day a manager asked me to visit his maintenance depot on third shift to find out why production was lagging there. I came in about midnight and met the nights shift supervisor. I introduced myself and told him that the VP of Operations had sent me to find out how I could help improve performance. The supervisor was indignant. He said, “Do you want to find out how to improve performance, come with me and I will show you.” I followed him down a set of stairs and into a large warehouse that was very dark. I asked him where we were and he said this was where they kept the extra supplies they needed to do their work. I asked him why the lights were out and he laughed. He informed me that they turned the power off after second shift to save money. I asked him how he found the parts they needed and he pulled a Bic lighter out of his pocket, flicked it a few times and then stuck it in my face. “This is how I find the parts” he said. “Tell them to turn the damn lights on and I can increase productivity.”
During my 20 years of consulting, I have found countless examples of productivity barriers that management either created or failed to remove. Deming continually reiterated that it was management’s job to take the barriers out of the system to allow the worker to improve and perform at a higher level. If you have the brakes on in your car, no amount of revving the engine will make the car go faster. The solution is to take the brakes off. Indeed, it is the only solution. Slogans and exhortations for productivity and innovation are worthless. Barriers in the system will block the best of efforts any day of the week. Furthermore, these barriers eventually create at best apathy and at worst contempt for the organizations mission and goals.
Organizations and life in general are imperfect systems. Barriers, obstacles, roadblocks, pitfalls, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and floods are a part of life. Each day we must motivate ourselves and others to start all over again removing the barriers of today. Tomorrow there will be more barriers. Life is a never-ending series of barriers. Management’s job is to remove the barriers or give more responsibility to employees to remove the barriers that they encounter. Using a Bic as a flash lighter is not the best way to illuminate a supply warehouse. If you truly want to develop a system for changing ideas into opportunities, you must be prepared for a daily systemic effort to identify and remove the innumerable barriers that exit to innovation in your organization.
5 Ways to Be Known as a Groundbreaking Thinker
5 Ways to Be Known as a Groundbreaking Thinker
Everyone has ideas; it's how you execute them that will get you noticed. Adopting these five principles will help.
By Jeff Haden | @jeff_haden | Nov 9, 2011
Would you like to be seen as a groundbreaker and a visionary? Want to be the Seth Godin of your field or the Malcolm Gladwell (possibly with a different hairstyle) of your industry?
You can—but it’s not easy. And it takes a lot more than sitting at a computer while the children are nestled all snug in their beds and visions of thought leadership dance in your head.
How do I know? Some of my clients are truly visionaries and leaders in their fields. I know what they’ve done to set themselves apart. In a few cases I’ve helped, but mostly I’ve marveled at their approach, energy, and most importantly persistence.
To be seen as a groundbreaking thinker, here are a few principles you must embrace:
You must start with show, not tell. Everyone has ideas. Ideas are cheap. Talk is even cheaper. We listen to leading thinkers because their ideas have been validated by success. Think about it: Would anyone consider Tony Hsieh to be a leading thinker in customer service and employee engagement if Zappos hadn’t experienced tremendous growth? Sure, occasionally a Chris Anderson will popularize a concept like the Long Tail, but he had already built a platform at Wired where he could share his ideas. (A visionary without a platform is a tree that falls in the forest and makes no sound.) When you prove your vision is valid, gaining recognition for visionary thinking is much easier.
If everyone agrees, you’re preaching to the choir. Most of us follow basic business principles. How we apply those principles may be (slightly) different because each of us is unique… but not really. To be a groundbreaker you must take a very different approach, and that means many people will disagree with your thinking even after you’ve proven you’re right. See push back as a sign you may really be on to something. But also make sure you’re prepared to take the heat when others attack—because they will.
You have to start small. Cobbling together a platform and building a following is incredibly hard. The Wall Street Journal won’t take your calls, but trade publications, local papers, radio stations, and moderately influential bloggers may, especially when you have something different to say and a story that proves your point. In some cases smaller mainstream media outlets not only don’t mind when you reach out, they want you to reach out, because many are starved for content. Be humble and speak and write for just about anyone who will have you. If you’re only willing to start at the top, you’ll never get started.
For a while no one will listen. And that’s okay. Groundbreakers not only have great ideas, they effectively communicate those ideas. You must be able to write and speak extremely well. Unless you have the resources to hire a ghostwriter to write articles, books, speeches, etc., it’s all on you. That’s another reason starting small is important; not only do you get to refine your message but you also get lots of practice writing and speaking.
And most importantly…
You must be sure the effort is worth it. If you’re a consultant or an author, being seen as a groundbreaking thinker can have a direct payoff. Heightened credibility and increased visibility can create broader opportunities, drive higher fees, and boost revenues. But in many cases the only boost you can receive is to your ego. Building a platform and an audience for your ideas is really, really hard. You’ll invest countless hours writing, speaking, promoting, and networking, possibly for very little return. Take a hard look at the tangible benefits you expect to receive. If you can’t quantify the return, put your time into other activities that will produce a real return.
If it’s just about your ego, you’ll never succeed, and in fact probably shouldn’t—because groundbreaking thinkers place all the emphasis on their ideas, not on themselves.
Another piece of advice - "don't put your pearls before swine." In other words, be prudent about who you share ideas with. When Jesus said those words, He was telling followers not to bother sharing teachings in situations where precious wisdom would be muddied up. Especially in the early stages, it helps to share ideas on fertile soil - with people who can respect and help develop them.
However, once articulated, it's important to get innovate ideas in front of critics who can function like "rocks on a bag" to help you polish up the rough edges.
Everyone has ideas; it's how you execute them that will get you noticed. Adopting these five principles will help.
By Jeff Haden | @jeff_haden | Nov 9, 2011
Would you like to be seen as a groundbreaker and a visionary? Want to be the Seth Godin of your field or the Malcolm Gladwell (possibly with a different hairstyle) of your industry?
You can—but it’s not easy. And it takes a lot more than sitting at a computer while the children are nestled all snug in their beds and visions of thought leadership dance in your head.
How do I know? Some of my clients are truly visionaries and leaders in their fields. I know what they’ve done to set themselves apart. In a few cases I’ve helped, but mostly I’ve marveled at their approach, energy, and most importantly persistence.
To be seen as a groundbreaking thinker, here are a few principles you must embrace:
You must start with show, not tell. Everyone has ideas. Ideas are cheap. Talk is even cheaper. We listen to leading thinkers because their ideas have been validated by success. Think about it: Would anyone consider Tony Hsieh to be a leading thinker in customer service and employee engagement if Zappos hadn’t experienced tremendous growth? Sure, occasionally a Chris Anderson will popularize a concept like the Long Tail, but he had already built a platform at Wired where he could share his ideas. (A visionary without a platform is a tree that falls in the forest and makes no sound.) When you prove your vision is valid, gaining recognition for visionary thinking is much easier.
If everyone agrees, you’re preaching to the choir. Most of us follow basic business principles. How we apply those principles may be (slightly) different because each of us is unique… but not really. To be a groundbreaker you must take a very different approach, and that means many people will disagree with your thinking even after you’ve proven you’re right. See push back as a sign you may really be on to something. But also make sure you’re prepared to take the heat when others attack—because they will.
You have to start small. Cobbling together a platform and building a following is incredibly hard. The Wall Street Journal won’t take your calls, but trade publications, local papers, radio stations, and moderately influential bloggers may, especially when you have something different to say and a story that proves your point. In some cases smaller mainstream media outlets not only don’t mind when you reach out, they want you to reach out, because many are starved for content. Be humble and speak and write for just about anyone who will have you. If you’re only willing to start at the top, you’ll never get started.
For a while no one will listen. And that’s okay. Groundbreakers not only have great ideas, they effectively communicate those ideas. You must be able to write and speak extremely well. Unless you have the resources to hire a ghostwriter to write articles, books, speeches, etc., it’s all on you. That’s another reason starting small is important; not only do you get to refine your message but you also get lots of practice writing and speaking.
And most importantly…
You must be sure the effort is worth it. If you’re a consultant or an author, being seen as a groundbreaking thinker can have a direct payoff. Heightened credibility and increased visibility can create broader opportunities, drive higher fees, and boost revenues. But in many cases the only boost you can receive is to your ego. Building a platform and an audience for your ideas is really, really hard. You’ll invest countless hours writing, speaking, promoting, and networking, possibly for very little return. Take a hard look at the tangible benefits you expect to receive. If you can’t quantify the return, put your time into other activities that will produce a real return.
If it’s just about your ego, you’ll never succeed, and in fact probably shouldn’t—because groundbreaking thinkers place all the emphasis on their ideas, not on themselves.
Another piece of advice - "don't put your pearls before swine." In other words, be prudent about who you share ideas with. When Jesus said those words, He was telling followers not to bother sharing teachings in situations where precious wisdom would be muddied up. Especially in the early stages, it helps to share ideas on fertile soil - with people who can respect and help develop them.
However, once articulated, it's important to get innovate ideas in front of critics who can function like "rocks on a bag" to help you polish up the rough edges.
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