Tag Archives: Innovation

Fostering Innovation in Teams

Posted on January 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

Recently I finished the book “Manager’s Guide to Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Teams” by Charles Prather.

My key takeaway from this book was not the process and exercises that were presented to help generate creative solutions to problems. Instead it was a point that was brought up many times in many different ways. As managers and leaders we play a very large part in fostering a creative environment. Our attitudes and biases can enhance the creative process, or they can completely stymie it. A command and control manager rarely leads a creative team. That leads to only one person’s ideas driving the team’s results. Managers who lead creative teams engage the hearts and minds of their employees to solve the biggest business problems. You have to step back and acknowledge that you are not always the expert, but that the members of your team are. That is why you hired them and why they remain part of your team.
This book builds upon previous work by Goran Ekvall and Scott Isaksen describing the dimensions of the climate for innovation. In order they are (with 1-6 being the most important overall in studies):

  1. Challenge and involvement
  2. Trust and openness
  3. Freedom
  4. Risk taking
  5. Idea time
  6. Idea support
  7. Debates on the issues
  8. Interpersonal conflict (negatively correlated)
  9. Playfulness and humor
  10. Value for diversity of problem-solving style

Are your employees challenged by their work and emotionally engaged in it? Do you promote an environment of trust and openness that facilitates risk taking and freedom of opinion and action? Does your team trust you enough to admit their mistakes early or to ask for help? If so, you are well on your way to fostering a creative environment.

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Ubiquitous Technology

Posted on October 16, 2010 | 1 Comment

If you’re like me, you depend on technology every single day in your life. I use it in my job, and I’m afraid that it has permeated every nook and cranny of my personal life as well. I have two, yes TWO smart phones. A Droid and an iphone. Don’t get me started on the religious debate, I have my favorite of that pairing. Sorry Apple.

One of the first things I do every morning is check my e-mail. One of the last things I do at night…. is sign off of my instant messenger accounts and… check my e-mail. Personal e-mail, work e-mail, e-mail that I use for subscriptions so it doesn’t clutter my personal e-mail account. Don’t forget Facebook, need to see what’s going on there too. Oh, and Twitter. Oh, and LinkedIn. I don’t read newspapers anymore – I read them online. Mail? What’s that? I rarely write checks, everything is automatically paid. I don’t run to the store to buy something, I do all the research and if I can’t find it locally I buy it online. Heck, I even use an online local foods service that delivers to my door. For those in Raleigh – Papa Spuds – tell them I sent you.

When all of this tech is humming along and working smoothly it is bliss. I am more productive than I’ve ever been, and I have access to things that were not available to me just 5 short years ago. Wow, things are great!

Not so fast.

Since technology is so ubiquitous we always expect it to be there and to work like it is supposed to. Occasionally it doesn’t and it really throws a wrench in things. Here’s a simple example. Someone contacted me to do a guest post on my blog. I responded with a nice e-mail saying “sure I’d love to collaborate” and oh by the way here are some links you might be interested in. I get another e-mail from the person asking: did you get my e-mail? I respond again. Nothing, nada, zilch. E-mail is just supposed to work. But often it doesn’t. Spam filters catch things they shouldn’t. Mail servers silently bounce messages for a variety of reasons, sometimes just the domain name is enough to cause this. Among friends and coworkers it’s easy to deal with this. “Did you get my e-mail?” No? Resend. When you’re dealing with clients or people you don’t have that relationship with it can just make you look unresponsive and really bad.

I wonder what the non-tech savvy people using tech every day think of this? Do they have any idea about the equipment that has been cobbled together over the last few decades that support all this functionality? Sometimes it’s a wonder it works at all and we are so dependent upon it. I’m allowed to say that, I’ve been in the guts of machines capable of running our country’s core networks.

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Posted in Technology

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Frog in a Pot

Posted on May 17, 2010 | 3 Comments

I think that everyone has heard the tale of the frog and the pot. If you put a frog into a pot of cold water and place it on the stove, the frog will happily sit there until it is cooked. If you attempt to put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will do its best to jump out.

I recently read a blog post entitled “Why Newcomers Often See Things More Clearly Than Old Hands” by Bob Sutton. FYI – he’s also the author of “The No Asshole Rule” which is an entertaining read.

I liken the newcomer to the frog placed into a pot of boiling water – the newcomer will have a reaction (either good or bad) to the host of interesting things that don’t even phase the long term employees. I know that I’m still in that place right now. I’m about 6.5 weeks into my employment now. There are things about my new place that still leave me starstruck. My goodness, the walking trails and rec center are amazing! I work with some people who are totally passionate about what they are working on. Now, on the dark side… it’s been a very long time since I’ve worked for a big company. Small companies are very nimble. I’m used to grabbing a few stakeholders and making important decisions quickly. These days I am feeling my way around – trying to understand which groups need to be included in what decisions. I’m learning all sorts of new processes – and some of them leave me scratching my head.

I think that a manager can always benefit from listening to what is causing a new person concern. So far my new manager has been pretty open to my comments, and I’m thankful for that.

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Posted in Leadership, Tactical

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The Innovator’s Dilemma

Posted on January 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

I recently read the Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.

Some parts of this book feel a little bit outdated due to the primary case study that is used: sustaining vs disruptive changes in the hard drive industry from the 1970s until the 1990s and how the companies in the industry coped with the changing business landscape. However, the messages that are represented are still valuable.

Key points for me include:

” Most managers learn about innovation in a sustaining technology context because most technologies developed by established companies are sustaining in character. Such innovations are, by definition, targeted at known markets in which customer needs are understood. In this environment, a planned, researched approach to evaluating, developing, and marketing innovative products is not only possible, it is critical to success.

What this means, however, is that much of what the best executives in successful companies have learned about managing innovation is not relevant to disruptive technologies.”

In a nutshell, if you are going after the same customer base or market segment you always have – with a known set of needs you won’t get any market research information to help you create disruptive technologies. In reality this data will discourage your attempts.

-and-

… the vast majority of successful new business ventures abandoned their original business strategies when they began implementing their initial plans and learned what would and would not work in the market. The dominant difference between successful ventures and failed ones, generally is not the astuteness of their original strategy. Guessing the right strategy at the outset isn’t nearly as important to success as conserving enough resources so that new business initiatives get a second or third stab at getting it right. Those that run out of resources or credibility before they can iterate toward a viable strategy are the ones that fail.”

Here, the message is that no one gets disruptive technologies right on their first attempt. Make sure to conserve resources and iterate repeatedly until you find that market or that strategy that works.

-and-

Not only do you need the right people to be able to develop your disruptive technologies, you need the right processes, and you need the right values or priorities. This is what makes it so hard to succeed in large companies which have qualified people and the money for the resources. However, the bigger the company, the more rooted in existing processes it is, and the more likely that the priorities of the organization as a whole are tied to large percentage gains in revenue which a new disruptive technology in a nascent industry is unlikely to provide.

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