Innovate or Die - Tactics #1-16 of 110

by Tom Peters

Recession or no recession, deep recession or not, the challenge to add more and more value grows, and the importance of innovation, and a culture of innovation, grows exponentially. A "culture of innovation" covers "everything." There is no halfway. There, of course, are "first principles." Or are there? I started a list of "stuff" that's imperative to creating an innovative enterprise. The list of 10 or so grew to 25, then 45, and at the moment includes no less than 110 "tactics." Of course you can't do all of them. Or must you? Well, you can't do all 110, or maybe even half that number, but the absence of any one or two or three or six weakens and perhaps even imperils the entire structure. Use what follows as you will.

Trying Stuff. Screwing Stuff Up. Fast.

1. Tries. Darwin rules. More stuff goin' on, more interesting-good stuff happenin'. Innovation is to a large extent a "numbers game": He-she who tries the most stuff wins. (Astonishingly true.)


2. Culture of "Try it! Now!" Culture! Culture! Attitude! Attitude! Mindset! Mindset! "The way we do things around here." "Around here, we try things first, fix 'em fast, try again, talk about it later, when we've got something to talk about."


3. Philosophy/F.A. Hayek/"spontaneous discovery process." Firm as market economy. New stuff emerges "spontaneously" from lots of trials and lots of errors. The innovator's life is life on the run, zigging here and zagging there - but always hustling.


4. Failures encouraged/celebrated/cherished. Failure is the key to success. Period. Fast failure is the key to fast success. And so on. This must be "cultural" to the core.


5. Transparency. All info on all these tries and cock-ups available to all to inspire, to chew over, to add to, to attract adherents and champions, etc.


6. Connection/Ubiquitous. No barriers! Across-the-wall communication is as normal as breathing!


7. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. An informal, in touch, high-camaraderie, on the move atmosphere underlies the "try it"-"screw it up"-"learn from it"-"fast" "culture."


8. Fail to share yields "death penalty." Sharing-transparency are the innovation organization's lubricant; therefore those who hoard must get the boot.


9. Fast prototyping/Serious play. Prototyping skills-attitude are more central than almost anyone can imagine. Entire organization as "playpen" with "playmates" gathering spontaneously to try stuff. Quickly. Quickly.


10. Tempo/OODA Loop mastery/RFA. "Ready. Fire. Aim." is the premier cultural trait. Try it-learn from it-try it again-spread the news-recruit adherents-etc. The organization has a high metabolic rate ("metabolic management"), a rapid tempo. The Observe-Orient-Decide-Act cycle, invented by military strategist John Boyd, is quick and the quickness per se confuses one's competitors.


11. FFFF/Find a Fellow Freak Faraway/"The Sri Lanka Strategy." Try cool-scary-risky stuff out in the boondocks, well away from HQ and typical HQ stuffiness. Find a playmate in "Sri Lanka" ready to give your idea a whirl; eventually, the network of Champions-from-the-boondocks become the premier carriers of the innovation.


12. Demos/Heroes/Stories. Tries and screw-ups and sagas of bold champions become the "stories" that animate the organization - and induce everyone to climb aboard, play with vigor, or lose out.


13. Social Networks. The emerging social networking tools become the accelerator for the process described and implied in these first dozen ideas. Nothing automatic about this - must be thought through, overseen (but also loose-as-a-goose, not judgmental). Emergent leadership from hither, thither, and yon becomes the de facto "leadership for innovation" in the organization.

Discipline. Accountability. Execution.

14. Department of Sanity/"Dreamers with Deadlines"/Fiscal responsibility/Budget skills. Warren Bennis called hot groups of innovators "dreamers with deadlines." Innovation is not pie-in-the-sky, "let's all have a blast, yo my man, cool, eh?" in nature. There is a compelling and disciplined "execution" thread that is central to the innovating organization. The innovating organization is focused on "new stuff," "cool stuff" - but is pragmatic to a fault. The project "budget and milestones guru" is as honored as the true believer-dreamer-champion.


15. Department of Sanity/Accountability. Screwing up, for instance, is essential to innovating. But there is as much accountability around screwing up as there is around inventory management in a traditional outfit; that is, the innovator takes responsibility for the screw-up and for insuring rapid learning and dissemination of lessons learned and for mounting the follow-up experiment posthaste.


16. Department of Sanity/Implementation training. Execution and Implementation are paramount skills, highly rewarded and cherished. Bunkmates to the end.

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Tom Peters is the author of "In Search of Excellence" and twelve other international bestsellers, and a consultant, columnist, seminar lecturer, and more at the Tom Peters Company

Innovating with Constraints

Our October Innovation Contest winners won a signed copy of "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis" by Bill George and the right to have their article re-published here on Blogging Innovation. Here is the first of the three winning entries:

by Tim Kastelle

I've been giving further thought to the issue of public sector innovation which I discussed briefly last week. John and I do a lot of work with people in the public sector as that makes up a fairly big part of Brisbane's economy, and I know that people often find it difficult to be innovative in that area. However, it is essential that we have good public sector innovation because large parts of our economies are in the public sector, and these parts are often very important. We just can't afford to have industries like health and education stagnate - innovation is critical in these fields, as it is in the other areas that fall within the public sector.

So what's the problem? There are a few. One is that overall, the public sector is not viewed as being very dynamic. Consequently, it does not attract a lot of attention from those of us that are interested in innovation. The Australian government is currently undertaking a review to try to devise strategies to improve public sector innovation. The website for this project includes a list of links to resources on public sector innovation (at the bottom of the page) - and you can see that there are not a lot of resources available (the project has a twitter feed too which updates new resources as they find them). This reflects a lack of interest at the levels of both research and policy.

The second issue is that government departments are often fairly risk averse - which makes innovation challenging. This issue is consistently raised by people in our innovation classes that come from the public sector, but it is a common issue for many people in other sectors as well - particularly middle managers that don't have much scope for action. When I talk to people in this situation they often say that the only way they can be more innovative is if they get more support from top management. It is true that top level support generally helps improve innovation. However, if you are waiting for increased upper management support before you start trying to innovate, in most cases, you're likely to be waiting for a long time.

There are a few things you can do to get out of the straightjacket. The main thing is to figure out how to try things. Experimenting is the key to innovating.


"The secret of fast progress is inefficiency, fast and furious and numerous failures." - Kevin Kelly


Now, obviously, failure is not a very popular idea within most government departments. The key to the whole idea though is to figure out ways to generate ideas and discard the ones that don't work as quickly and cheaply as possible. There are three steps here.

The first is to generate ideas.


"The secret to having good ideas is to have a lot of ideas, then throw the bad ones away." - Linus Pauling


Usually, this isn't the problem. People are naturally creative, and the number of untapped ideas that are in your organisation will probably surprise you. One way or another, you need to figure out how to tap into these. If you want some place to start, go to the Tom Peters site and download the Innovation Tactics paper that he has there.

The second step is the tricky one in public sector organisations - you have to select which ideas to try out. The central idea here is to look at how much authority you have. This might be as simple as signing authority - if you can authorise items worth up to $100, then what new ideas can you try to implement for $100 or less? What if you can't authorise any expenditures? The two jobs in which I've been the most innovative have actually both been in the public sector. In the first, I worked out at the start 47 ideas that I thought might make my section run better. Over 18 months, I tried out 45, at a total implementation cost of $0. At the end of that time, my section was just under 20% more effective in turning enquiries into new students, in part as a result of some of those 45 ideas that we tried. Not all of them worked, but a lot of them did - and some of the simplest had the biggest impacts. My bosses weren't too enthusiastic about new ideas when I started, but they were very enthusiastic about results. Most bosses are. So the second step is to figure out what you can get away with, and start trying things that fall within your scope of power. That's how select the ideas to try - you may have to wait on the big ones that will change the world, but if you succeed with some small ones, you may eventually get to try those out too.

The final step is getting the ideas that work to spread.


"Some people look for things that went wrong and try to fix them. I look for things that went right, and try to build off them." - Bob Stone


You need a strategy for amplifying the good ideas. Part of this is selling them to the people around you. To do this, you need to figure out which of the ideas are working. An important activity here is measurement - if you're able to measure the outcomes of your ideas, it is easier to gain support for trying more things.

Innovating is always hard. It's especially hard if you don't feel supported. But the key to innovating when you have constraints is to try things. Try as many as you can, figure out what works, and do more of that. It's a formula that you can follow in nearly every work setting. Instead of telling me why it won't work in yours, why don't you spend the time figuring out a new idea to try yourself instead?


"We have a 'strategic plan'. It's called doing things." - Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)


(photo from flickr/djwudi - creative commons licensed)

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Tim Kastelle is a Lecturer in Innovation Management in the University of Queensland Business School. He blogs about innovation at the Innovation Leadership Network.

For Better Innovation - Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Cheap

by Jim Estill

Companies need to be encouraging of failure. Too often people are disciplined for trying things that do not work. I advocate the opposite. Praise those who try - even if they fail.

Fail Often

• Much of success is just a numbers game. Try more things and you are more likely to find a winner. Innovation is like sales - you never know which idea will be the winner until you try things. A big obstacle for anyone reluctant to try something new is being afraid to fail. Thomas Edison for example had to make thousands of attempts at the electric lightbulb before getting it right. Don't give up after your first challenge. Our most successful leaders and entrepreneurs have often had to make at least a few attempts before they began to thrive.

Fail Fast

• One challenge many companies are faced with is being slow. Using the Fail Fast approach the motto is 'Just Try It - Now'. Many companies suffer from analysis paralysis where often the best choice is to just try it. It is often better to make an imperfect decision quickly than to not make a decision while trying to be perfect. More companies (and people) lose from perfection than lose from speed. Being able to fail fast can often mean getting a head start over the competition. In many cases you can work on the actual implementation later on and make changes as needed.

Fail Cheap

• Of course failures need to be affordable. This means thinking downside and risk. Risk what you can afford. Companies that thrive take 'manageable risks'. Be creative with ways of keeping risk low, perhaps you can test a product with a focus group instead of over-producing. Try to negotiate a deal first before accepting all the terms and conditions. Leverage the power of information and talent. Failing cheaply means you can get back on your feet more easily than someone who overextended themselves.

Having failures does not make you a failure. Not trying makes you a failure.

So Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Cheap. Use failure to innovate.

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Jim Estill is a venture capitalist, author and business consultant. He sits on the board of RIM. He is a blogger at www.jimestill.com or follow him on twitter @jimestill.

Bias for Action

by Matt Heinz

Should one of your company, department or individual core values be a bias for action?

What does that mean? It means you take action. Get projects, products and campaigns to market quickly. You test. You spend more time executing, learning and improving.

You let the market help you make decisions vs. doing it in isolation. You test quickly instead of debating via PowerPoint, email or endless meetings.

You're OK with constructive failure, as long as you can learn, improve and avoid the same mistake twice.

You encourage, demand and/or require those around you (peers, direct reports and superiors) to think strategically, but act quickly.

Bias for action does not mean acting without forethought. Execution without strategy is just guessing, and prone to high error and failure rates.

Instead, bias for action means having an idea or premise, and understanding quickly what that market thinks of it. The faster you take action, the faster you execute, the more quickly you will deliver innovation, results and growth.

How important is a bias for action to you individually? How about for your department and/or company?

More importantly, how do you put that into practice on a regular basis?

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.