[MUSIC]. In this, part of the lecture I'd like to talk about building innovative organizations. What are the things we can do, as leaders, an also as followers in organization, to help our organizations become, what I'm going to call routinely innovative. So the first thing is about developing an innovation strategy inside of your organization. And so there have been a number of constraints that we've talked about, all going along, especially at the organization. Like I talked about structure, strategy, and resources. But there are other, some other things that we need to consider as we move forward and take it out into our organization. and how we can make this thing called an organization much more innovative. And so one thing is you may have and I've actually met a number of people and I know there are a number of people in this course who have the word innovation in their title. And the question for those people is or often they, they talk to me about is say I'm not sure where I fit within the organizational structure. And they say I'm accountable for innovation. I'm really not sure what that actually means. What does it mean to be accountable for innovation inside of an organization? How do i go about doing that thing? If I'm responsible for it, how do I do it? What to I do? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get that done? Well, one things is that organizations want innovation, you know innovation nowadays it's sexy. It's, it's modern, it's like who doesn't want innovation? And so you may be told in your organization, how do we become innovative now. Like we need to become innovative now. You see all of these company like Apple and Google and they're innovative. We need to be innovative, let's do it now. And you say, it's not that easy. And I say, Well what's there to understand? There's not anything to understand. Why would you need to practice, just go do this thing called innovation. You're the global director for innovation, just go do this thing called innovation. 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. Then last thing I want to talk about here is innovation process. You know, the organizations have power and politics, do they understand how those work, do they understand may be that bring a new person in from the outside to do this thing called innovation. So, first of all, this person is not well known. They may not have the political clout inside. Then you're asking them to do, to lead something risky. If I were in the organization, had been there a long time and someone from the outside comes in and says, I need you to do everything differently than you're doing, that might create problems, right. I might, they might not have a lot of legitimacy with me, so I need to be thinking about this. How do the, are the politics working? How do the power dynamics work inside the organization? Is the organization willing to enforce an innovation process to say, okay, when you innovate, these are the things I need you to do this, do this, do this. And, often times, organizations will come in and say, hey, put together an innovation process for us. Put it together and they say, okay, well that was great, and then they, they ignore it. They don't actually do it, or they don't enforce the use of it maybe, the first two projects it gets done, but then subsequent projects it doesn't get done. And then it never gets revisited again, do organization recognize the need to increase communication, that we need to move information from one part of the organization to another? I showed you during the organization a constraints discussion some you know outrageous organization charts and how do we move information from one place to another information has to move and it cannot simply move by reports we can go by a very thin reports where everything is reduced to some number and assume that that's called communication. No, communication is expensive, communication requires time, communication may require moving people, communication requires space where I can put people together are we willing to, as an organization, to invest in that? To invest in the affordances, the things that help increase communication. Also, are there changes you need in organization culture maybe, in the past we were very cautious organization, we're always didn't we I think as one organization was described, In god we trust, all others bring data. And some changes in that culture may be required if we're going to push to a new place that sometimes we have to say, I don't know, but I think we should go forward anyways. And this may require significant cultural change in the organization to be able to do this. And then again we come back to the question, do they really want change, right? I want innovation, but I don't want o do anything different. I want innovation, but I really don't want to change. And so we have to sort of find way of asking this question. People will say yes, if you ask someone this question. Do you really want to change, they will say yes, Bbut you need to go through and see if you can find some more evidence that in fact they are ready to change, and they are willing to change. And that if the proposition that you offer them makes sense that they will actually go for it and change around that prop, proposition. So, you know everyone wants innovation but no one wants to change, and so that's the quandary that we have. That we really have to think about as we push innovation through in organizations.
