Oh, and by the way, don't mess up my organization, and don't ask me to change
a strategy. Just do this thing called innovation, but
don't ask me to do anything differently than I currently do and this is the
quandary that's set up. This is the difficult, you know, the sort
of the paradox that's set up for people who are asked to be doing innovation
inside their organization. And so I have some questions that I'll
offer you to really to decide for yourself either do I take on this job of,
of becoming the innovator, or becoming the lead innovator?
Or even if I am sort of you know, forced into or, or want to take this job called
being the lead innovator, what are the kind of question I need to be thinking
about? So one thing is asking, what kind of
innovation do they actually want? The people say they want innovation, they
want radical innovation, they want adaptive innovation, they want small
innovation. Do they want you know disruptive
innovation people often aren't sure when we ask them this question they might
actually start to think about it and say okay I'm actually I do need to be a
little bit more clear about that. Second question, are they willing to pay
the price for innovation? Innovation causes people to behave
different. You know, creative people act differently
than other people. And so are they willing to pay the price
for that there's a price in learning, there's a price in time, there's a price
in money, there's a price in risk. All these things are at risk, when we do
this thing called innovation. Are they willing to say, hey we're
working on the wrong problem? We think it's a product problem, but
actually it's a process problem. Or maybe we think it's a process problem,
but actually it's a product problem. Are the people asking us to innovate, are
they willing to admit that they are working on the wrong problem?
You know, do we have the proper resources, are the resources going to be
made available. And ultimately, really, do they really
want innovation? People will tell you they want
renovation, but you have to really ferret out to say, do they really want
innovation? Because it's not always clear that people
want innovation, even if they tell you that they want innovation.
And so, these are the things we have to think about as we're asked to do this
thing called innovation. And let me just say with these questions,
and, and I'm going to show you some more. These are ones that I often use when
organizations ask me to come in and consult with them or come do some
education on innovation with them. I try to make sure I get some answers to
these before I agree to go in the organization.
Otherwise, I feel like I'm wasting my time, and they're not going to be happy,
I'm not going to be happy, and the problem is not going to get solved unless
we can answer these kinds of questions. Do they understand cognitive styles, and
so does the organization have the kind of innovation tools that need to be in place
in order for them to do this thing called innovation?
You know cognitive styles, how people think and can people think differently?
Do they know how to use ideation tools? You know there's sets of tools that we
may need to use that allow people to get to different places.
How do they compose groups? Are they using groups in a good way?
How do they compose those groups? Let's say if someone's from sales, and
someones from marketing and someones from here, or do they take people who are not
working on other things because their lazy or because their not just good
workers and they put those people on the team.
You know, how are they composing the groups decision making do they have a
very rigid decision making process where every product has a show and ROI of you
know, 8.7% before it's decided to go forward.
That may be completely inappropriate way to make decisions to evaluate
innovations, and so that's something that really needs to be accounted for.
And then also is a reward system appropriate?
So, if you ask people to take a risk, you ask people to come to this new place
around innovation to do something different.
If it fails, do they get fired? Alright, that would not be an appropriate
reward system. They have to actually be able to feel
like working on this thing is rewarded. Working on something is uncertain that's
risky, that may move the organization's work, that may fail that there is
something is valid inside the organization.
