Stop trying to innovate, change first
So you came to the conclusion that you have to innovate because disruption is everywhere. The world is changing ever faster around you and you have to keep up. You have installed an innovation board and made clear innovation is your top priority. You have even asked for outside help. However, results have been lacking. Why?
Be aware of principles of operational excellence. They have probably been deeply ingrained in your organization, for the survival of your company in the past. They shape your way of working. Be it formalized in principles, procedures, organizational structures, values, and as a set of unwritten rules and behaviors. While operational excellence is still a worthwhile constant to strive for, it is no longer the sole recipe for success.
No help from the status quo
You can’t rely on your traditional system Integrator or existing software vendors to deliver the technical innovation for you. Actually, in some cases, there is a perverse incentive for your suppliers to maintain the status quo, to keep pushing legacy and to continue to take on your “unfixable problems”. Because this is how some organizations grow their power over you and keep on growing their business instead of yours.
Put a stop to the mono-culture
Of course, I don’t want you to just throw a KPI on your change process and let the organization take care of the rest when I wrote about the metric for your rate-of-innovation in my previous blog. It’s all about getting the ideas out there and gathering feedback on them as fast as possible. It’s about streamlining your feedback loop. Right now, your organization and its mono-culture of operational excellence may be prohibiting innovation from happening.
Change: (noun) an act or process through which something becomes different
Let’s embrace change. You might agree that it’s quite a catchy marketing slogan. In this case, it definitely does carry some weight. Change is the new normal. In order to innovate, new values, new interactions, new processes, and new principles are key. This new normal is desirable. You should embrace it. Loving change will lead to desirable outcomes in a different world. A world where there is a constant state of uncertainty about what should be done. When important events are occurring ever more rapidly, it is important to establish a new direction of action more quickly.
But first, stop acting so serious
Before you can change, you have to take into account which powers are at play. Analyze carefully, be open and honest. There is no shame. You’ve done a tremendous job, though things have to change now. Communicate the urgency repeatedly and then change radically. One tactic could be to start this change within one new autonomous team. Getting rid of all existing hierarchies and stop everything you were doing before. Start creating ideas, set goals, have a purpose and be meaningful.
Being in a traditional professional working atmosphere can raise the bar for sharing your own “crazy” ideas. You’re not totally comfortable. You’re afraid to be judged. The serious faces in the room don’t invite to let yourself be vulnerable. In my opinion, there often is a misunderstanding about what “professional” means. I’m pretty sure a full-time ‘serious face’ doesn’t invite people to share their ideas. In a group where there is trust and comfort, a crazy idea can lead to valuable innovation upon interaction with open and diverse minds. When you’re having doubts about an idea, just give it a chance by saying “show me”, instead of crushing it without even trying. Conversely, don’t interpret critical questions as an intend to kill your idea. True 10x engineering requires ten times the trust. One important way to trust each other is to get to know each other. By spending time together!
All companies are tech companies
We’re living in the age of technology. Technology and especially the interactions people are having with it are shaping our world. Before, the majority of the organizations used to say “we are not a technology company”. This used to be totally reasonable. I can’t imagine that most companies are not at least partly a technology company, with all the disruption caused by technology nowadays, and the big part it is playing in our daily lives. We — at Incentro — know that in the end, it’s all about service and customer experience. The technology behind it is just an enabler to keep optimizing these values. Though internally you have to be in touch with technology. So figure out how emerging technologies will have an effect on your business, for example by doing a technology radar session to see how this might affect your business. I promise… it’s fun!
This blog is part of a series. Visit the Incentro platform to read more about fragile ideas and the importance of a cloud native way of working, in order to grow and innovate.
