Thinking the Unthinkable

The New Leadership Imperative

by Holly G. Green

People ask me all the time what I consider to be the biggest challenge facing today's business leaders.

I don't even hesitate on this one. It's the automatic assumption by most business leaders that we still live in a fairly predictable world.

Think about it. Six months ago, who would have thought that Toyota would be in the position it is today?

Here we have one of the largest, most successful, most respected companies in the world. And now it faces a crisis that is not just destroying its hard-earned reputation, but could well put it out of business.

That's unthinkable! And yet it's happening right before our eyes.

Sales of Toyotas are plummeting. The U.S. government is launching a full-scale investigation into the company's business practices. And a tidal wave of lawsuits around the faulty floor mat/throttle issue is about to be unleashed.

If Toyota is found to be at fault, and if it turns out they had knowledge of the defective design and did nothing about it, punitive damages could run into billions of dollars. Not even Toyota could withstand that kind of a financial hit and still survive.

I'm not saying the unthinkable will happen. But the possibility that Toyota could go out of business in the near term is very real. And that's the kind of world we now live in.

Leading a business in this kind of environment requires a new way of thinking. Considering that most business leaders still view the world as fairly predictable, the question becomes:


How do we train ourselves to think differently?


The answer is simple - pause, think, focus, run.

• Pause. Make it a habit to back away from the day-to-day and evaluate what is happening outside your industry as well as inside.


• Think. Constantly challenge your beliefs and assumptions about what you know to be true about your customers, your markets, your industry and the way you do things inside your organization. Take nothing for granted.


• Focus. Identify opportunities to add value to your customers in ways that nobody else is doing. Identify significant initiatives that support leveraging those opportunities, and get and keep everyone in your organization clear on achieving them.


• Run. Implement quickly, with focus and flexibility, knowing in advance that your new initiatives will not unfold exactly as planned.
  Then repeat this process.

During the think phase, develop the habit of engaging in scenario planning. Ask questions like:


"What would happen if our biggest competitor suddenly went out of business? What is taking place in other industries or other parts of the world that we could use to transform our industry?"


Many companies do this once a year during the strategic planning process. In today's world, that will no longer suffice. When a company as large and seemingly invincible as Toyota can have the rug pulled out from under them so quickly, it's clear the old rules no longer apply.

Pondering the imponderable should become an everyday occurrence in organizations. To be a successful leader today, thinking the unthinkable must become a way of life.


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Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. (www.TheHumanFactor.biz) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking.

Six Steps of CEO Decision Making

by Mike Myatt

You cannot separate leadership from decision making, for like it or not, they are inexorably linked. Put simply, the outcome of a CEO's decisions can, and usually will, make or break them. Those CEOs who avoid making decisions solely for fear of making a bad decision, or conversely those that make decisions just for the sake of making a decision will likely not last long. The fact of the matter is that senior executives who rise to the C-suite do so largely based upon their ability to consistently make sound decisions. However while it may take years of solid decision making to reach the boardroom, it often times only takes one bad decision to fall from the ivory tower. As much as you may wish it wasn't so, as a CEO you're really only as good as your last decision.

"CEO Decision Making" is a skill set that needs to be developed like any other. As a person that works with leaders on a daily basis I can tell you with great certainty that all CEOs are not created equal when it comes to the competency of their decision making skills. Nothing will test your metal as CEO more than your ability to make decisions. I happen to be the type of person that would rather make the decision than have to live with someone else's decisions. In fact, I absolutely love to make decisions, and whether it is in my role in the business world, or my role as a husband and father, I want to be the one making the tough calls. That being said, nobody is immune to bad decision making. We have all made bad decisions whether we like to admit it or not. Show me someone who hasn't made a bad decision and I'll show you someone who is either not being honest, or someone who avoids decision making at all costs, which by the way, constitutes a bad decision.

For more than 25 years I have either served in the capacity of a principal owner, senior executive, or professional advisor, and have generally been well regarded for my decision making ability. However like everyone else, I have also made some regrettable decisions along the way. When I reflect back upon the poor decisions I've made, it's not that I wasn't capable of making the correct decision, but for whatever reason I failed to use sound decision making methodology. Gut instincts can only take you so far in life, and anyone who operates outside of a sound decision making framework will eventually fall prey to an act of oversight, misinformation, misunderstanding, manipulation, impulsivity or some other negative influencing factor.

The complexity of the current business landscape, combined with ever increasing expectations of performance, and the speed at which decisions must be made, are a potential recipe for disaster for today's executive unless a defined methodology for decision making is put into place. If you incorporate the following metrics into your decision making framework you will minimize the chances of making a bad decision:

1. Perform a Situation Analysis: What is motivating the need for a decision? What would happen if no decision is made? Who will the decision impact (both directly and indirectly)? What data, analytics, research, or supporting information do you have to validate the inclinations driving your decision?


2. Subject your Decision to Public Scrutiny: There are no private decisions. Sooner or later the details surrounding any decision will likely come out. If your decision were printed on the front page of the newspaper how would you feel? What would your family think of your decision? How would your shareholders and employees feel about your decision? Have you sought counsel and/or feedback before making your decision?


3. Conduct a Cost/Benefit Analysis: Do the potential benefits derived from the decision justify the expected costs? What if the costs exceed projections, and the benefits fall short of projections?


4. Assess the Risk/Reward Ratio: What are all the possible rewards, and when contrasted with all the potential risks are the odds in your favor, or are they stacked against you?


5. Assess Whether it is the Right Thing To Do: Standing behind decisions that everyone supports doesn't particularly require a lot of chutzpah. On the other hand, standing behind what one believes is the right decision in the face of tremendous controversy is the stuff great leaders are made of. My wife has always told me that "you can't go wrong by going right," and as usual I find her advice to be spot on. Never compromise you value system, your character, or your integrity.


6. Make The Decision: Perhaps most importantly you must have a bias toward action, and be willing to make the decision. Moreover as a CEO you must learn to make the best decision possible even if you possess an incomplete data set. Don't fall prey to analysis paralysis, but rather make the best decision possible with the information at hand using some of the methods mentioned above. Opportunities and not static, and the law of diminishing returns applies to most opportunities in that the longer you wait to seize the opportunity the smaller the return typically is. In fact, more likely is the case that the opportunity will completely evaporate if you wait too long to seize it.

If you develop the appropriate blend of a bias to action with an analytical approach to decision making your stock as CEO will surely rise. Good luck and good decision making...


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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Innovation - Have the Last Laugh

Book Review and Innovation Summary - "The Levity Effect" by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher

Innovation is hard, dirty, contentious work full of creative tension and disagreements and barriers to be overcome. All the more reason why it is important for innovation managers to not take themselves too seriously, and to know how to loosen up and allow as much fun into the process as possible. As I've said before, innovation and business success are the result of the quality of your insights and the quality of your execution.

You have to have find a way to have some fun on the bumpy road to innovation, or you will definitely fall into a pothole and stay there.

"The Levity Effect" by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher is all about why it pays to lighten up in business. It is no accident that many of the best places to work are also some of the best performing businesses. Here are a couple of quotes from the book that capture its essence:


"An increasing body of research demonstrates that when leaders lighten up and create a un workplace, there is a significant increase in the level of employee trust, creativity, and communication..."

"...fun in great companies is natural, organic... The relationship comes before the fun, which makes the fun real and acceptable."


I'd like to focus one particular quote from the book from Amy Lyman, co-founder of the Great Place to Work Institute - "Fun benefits from high trust and vice versa. Since people are trusting, they aren't afraid to make fools of themselves and take more risks. And in turn trust is reinforced and benefits from the fun experiences people have." - The reason you should think slowly and deeply about this quote is that, when it comes to innovation, risk-averse cultures find it the most difficult to innovate. So, if people in your organization don't find it safe to take risks in small ways, what makes you think they will feel safe taking the big risks that innovation often requires?

When it comes to Continuous Innovation, if it wasn't clear before, let me say that I believe that building a culture conducive and supportive of innovation is the real key to success (and the hardest thing to do). If you've already created a culture of respect and trust in your organization, then fun is the next step, and you should consider this book for your reading list.

You'll have to read the book to really understand the full importance of levity, but just to be clear, that when it comes to levity, they're not saying that as a manager that you have to be a comedian, but you do need allow yourself to be human, to connect with people, and to have a sense of humor. Ultimately, people are less creative and innovative when they are stressed, so if you as a manager can help people feel more relaxed and make the atmosphere a little less tense, and show people a little respect, then who knows what creativity might spring forth.


"Levity is the link between trust, respect, and the engagement of a workforce. It is human alchemy."


Want to hear something truly disturbing from the book that will really make you re-evaluate your life? A study referenced in the book found that preschool children laugh up to 400 times a day, while adults only manage 15. Fifteen! "No wonder kids think adults are about as fun as a box of hair."

• So, how much fun are you?
  
• How much fun is your workplace?
  
• Is your workplace conducive to innovation?

Please leave a comment and let us know. :-)


As a special bonus, here are Scott Christopher and Adrian Gostick talking on The Today Show about the book:





My interview with "The Levity Effect" author Scott Christopher can be found here.


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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Pick Your Best People to Lead Innovation

by Paul Sloane

Many businesses make the mistake of giving innovation projects to junior executives. It seems natural to hand innovation opportunities to enthusiastic and promising upstarts. But generally it is the experienced heavyweights who can overcome all the process and political obstacles that will occur.

In September 1999 Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM, read a line buried deep in a report which said that current quarter pressures had forced a business unit to cut costs by stopping efforts in a promising new area. Gerstner was incensed and wanted to find out how often this happened. He asked J. Bruce Harreld, IBM's senior VP in charge of Strategy to find out. Harreld found a similar pattern in at least 22 other cases. IBM had plenty of new ideas but it had a remarkably hard time turning those ideas into businesses. IBM had produced many crucial inventions, such as the relational database and the router, then watched while others, such as Oracle and Cisco built huge companies around them.

Harreld investigated the causes and found that IBM rewarded short-term results and was reluctant to devote management attention and resources to rolling the dice. IBM's leaders did not spend much time on new businesses and they did not tap their "A-team" of executives to run them. "We were relegating this to the most inexperienced people," said Herrald. "We were not putting the best and brightest talent on this." (Quotes from FastCompany magazine, March 2005 issue)

Gerstner and Harreld reversed this approach. They deliberately put their most experienced and talented executives in charge of Emerging Business Opportunities (EBOs). Their mission was to find areas that are new to IBM that can yield profitable billion-dollar-plus businesses in five to seven years. The program has been a remarkable success. Between 2000 and 2005 IBM launched 25 EBOs. Three failed and were closed down but the remaining 22 produced annual revenues of over $15 billion and growth of over 40% per year.

More importantly than their revenue impact, the EBOs helped change IBM's culture. "We've become more willing to experiment, more willing to accept failure, learn from it and move on. Now being an EBO leader is a really desirable job at IBM," says Harreld.

The lesson from IBM is clear. If you want to change the culture of an organisation so that it values innovation and new business start-ups then get your most senior and best people involved in these activities. Don't delegate it to lower level staff and hope for the best.


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Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader published by Kogan-Page.

Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating

by Mitch Ditkoff

Recognize any of these? If so, find your way pass the 100th and learn how to go beyond them. Takes less than five minutes. (Or maybe a lifetime).

1. I don't have the time.
2. I can't get the funding.
3. My boss will never go for it.
4. Were not in the kind of business likely to innovate.
5. We won't be able to get it past legal.
6. I've got too much on my plate.
7. I'll be punished if I fail.
8. I'm just not not the creative type.
9. I'm already juggling way too many projects.
10. I'm too new around here.


11. I'm not good at presenting my ideas.
12. No one, besides me, really cares about innovation.
13. There's too much bureaucracy here to get anything done.
14. Our customers aren't asking for it.
15. We're a risk averse culture. Always will be.

16. We don't have an innovation process.
17. We don't have a culture of innovation.
18. They don't pay me enough to take on this kind of project.
19. My boss will get all the credit.
20. My career path will be jeopardized if this doesn't fly.

21. I've already got enough headaches.
22. I'm no good at office politics.
23. My home life will suffer.
24. I'm not disciplined enough.
25. It's an idea too far ahead of its time.

26. I won't be able to get enough resources.
27. I don't have enough information.
28. Someone will steal my idea.
29. It will take too long to get results.
30. We're in a down economy.

31. It will die in committee.
32. I'll be laughed out of town.
33. I won't be able to get the ear of senior leadership.
34. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
35. The concept is too disruptive.

36. I won't be able to get enough support.
37. I don't tolerate ambiguity all that well.
38. I'm not in a creative profession.
39. Now is not a good time to start a new project.
40. I don't have the right personality to build a team.

41. Our company is going through too many changes right now.
42. They won't give me any more time to work on the project.
43. If I succeed, too much will be expected of me.
44. Nothing ever changes around here.
45. Things are changing so fast, my head is spinning.

46. Whatever success I achieve will be undone by somebody else.
47. I don't have enough clout to get things done.
48. It's just not worth the effort.
49. I'm getting close to retirement.
50. My other projects will suffer.

51. Been there, done that.
52. I don't want another thing to think about.
53. I won't have any time left for my family.
54. A more nimble competitor will beat us to the punch.
55. Teamwork is a joke around here.

56. I've never done anything like this before.
57. I won't be rewarded if the project succeeds.
58. We're not measured for innovation.
59. I don't have the right credentials.
60. We need more data.

61. It's not my job.
62. It will hard sustaining the motivation required.
63. I've tried before and failed.
64. I'm not smart enough to pull this off.
65. I don't want to go to any more meetings.

66. It will take way too long to get up to speed.
67. Our Stage Gate process will sabotage any hope of success.
68. I'm not skillful at building business cases.
69. Summer's coming.
70. The marketplace is too volatile.

71. This is a luxury we can't afford at this time.
72. I think we're about to be acquired.
73. I'm trying to simplify my life, not complicate it.
74. The dog ate my homework.
75. Help! I'm a prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory.

76. My company just wants to squeeze more blood from the stone.
77. My company isn't committed to innovation.
78. I don't have the patience.
79. I'm not sure how to begin.
80. I'm too left-brained for this sort of thing.

81. I won't be able to get the funding required.
82. I'm getting too old for this.
83. We're too competitive, in-house. Collaboration is a rarity.
84. Spring is coming.
85. I'm hypoglycemic.

86. That's Senior Leadership's job
87. I'm thinking of quitting.
88. Market conditions just aren't right.
89. We need to focus on the short term for a while.
90. Innovation, schminnovation.

91. What we really need are some cost cutting initiatives.
92. Six Sigma will take care of everything.
93. Mercury is in retrograde.
94. IT won't go for it.
95. Maybe next year.

96. That's my boss's job.
97. That's R&D's job.
98. I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't.
99. First, we need to benchmark the competition.
100. It's against my religion.


How to Go Beyond These Lame Excuses

1. Make a list of your three most bothersome ones.


2. Turn each excuse into a question, beginning with the words "How can I?" or "How can we?" (For example, if your excuse is "That's R&D's job," you might ask "How can I make innovation my job?" or "How can I help my team take more responsibility for innovating?"


3. Brainstorm each question - alone and with your team.


4. Then, DO something about it within the next 48 hours.

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Mitch Ditkoff is the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions and the author of "Awake at the Wheel", as well as the very popular Heart of Innovation blog.

Innovation gone too far? - The Toyota Recall

by Robert F. Brands with Jeff Zbar

Once upon a time, to start your Toyota Camry, you placed a key in the ignition and turned until the electrical connection was made and engine started.

To accelerate, you pressed the gas pedal, which pulled a cable attached to a mechanical throttle. Assuming the shift had been manually placed into gear - the car moved.

Today, electronics and computers have replacement many of the mechanical parts that once made cars move. To start many cars or place them in gear, buttons are pushed. To accelerate, the gas pedal is connected not to a cable, but to a computer - via electronic circuitry.

In light of Toyota's massive recall of 10 million of Camry, Tercel, Prius hybrid and luxury Lexus models (and that's a shortened list), one has to wonder: At what point does innovation encourage failure?

In other words, has Toyota gone too far? In the interest of fairness, these issues potentially affect any modern automobile. Already, GM is facing recalls related to steering.

The costs - in terms of finances and consumer confidence - can be great. As Toyota mechanics are correcting millions of cars and consumer confidence lags, rival automakers have reported double-digit sales growth.

But the question of innovation for innovation's sake - or for the sake of "technological evolution" - begs to be asked. Sure, innovation of the vehicle and the way it's manufactured cuts costs, including labor and benefits. We continually innovate to cost reduce. But now, cars don't just turn on with the turn of a key. And when they don't roar to life as expected, the corner mechanic must be trained not only in auto repair, but in computers technology (assuming he or she owns the equipment).

This reminds me of a story. It was the 1970s. Two adventurers once were traveling by pick-up truck in northern Mexico when their vehicle broke down. The local mechanic took a look under the hood, grabbed a coffee can of old parts, and fashioned a fix.

How does this all relate to the innovation imperatives? In "Robert's Rules of Innovation", it mentions two key imperatives that seem to have gone awry here. First, Toyota sought the imperative of value creation in pursuit of innovation. Yet, any value created through their innovation-gone-awry is more than lost through the recall and labor costs and lost sales and good will.

Second, who has been held accountable? After first declining to do so, Toyota President Akio Toyoda made a very public appearance on Capitol Hill. He apologized and promised to "do everything in my power" to ensure the malfunctions and tragedies don't happen again. Do Americans buy it? Can Toyota afford to wait and wonder?

To that end, the complexity of the conundrum facing Toyota at one point was belied by the simplicity of their first apparent fix. After spending days in conference over how to remedy the stuck throttle, high-paid engineers came up with a simple solution: Shorten the gas pedal.

To be sure, in the end, the issues facing the automaker were far more complex than nipping an inch off a too-long pedal. But could the issues have been remedied in the designer's or accountant's office years ago - when the company believed innovation would save money?

We - and Toyota - may never know. But we've learned that innovation poorly planned can have the greatest expectations, but the worst outcomes.


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Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of "Robert's Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival", with Martin Kleinman - to be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

Winning the Gold Medal

by Holly G. Green

I love the Olympics. I am fascinated by curling (although like most of you I can't quite figure out the rules). I love the thrill of the downhill, the luge, the speed skating, hockey, and the snowboarding events. And I am especially enthralled when I watch the Olympic athletes visibly get clear on winning.

Did you notice Lindsey Vonn at the top of the slope? Eyes closed, arms moving, legs bending as if she were already traveling down the slope in just the manner necessary to win? She was using a practice known as 'success visioning'. She was imagining the course, every twist, every turn... and how she would successfully meet the challenge of it and win the race. Olympic athletes have used success visioning for decades; since the time Roger Bannister broke the world record for running the mile in less than 4 minutes in 1954.

Premier athletes the world over know the power of getting clear on winning BEFORE they get in the race. They imagine it. They get clear on what it looks like, what it feels like, and what they must do. And it works because your brain is amazingly powerful. Once you are clear on winning, your body will follow. In many ways, it can't not follow. Your brain does not know you can't run faster, ski quicker, make higher jumps... it only knows what you tell it and your body steps up to deliver.

Winning also requires practice. Winning for an athlete means he/she is in top condition. It is likely they have practiced their race thousands of times. They are eating the right foods, taking care of themselves, and making progress almost every day towards their goal. Lindsey did not just sit around for a year, jump up, and ski her race. She got clear on goals, met them, and then set new ones. She spent her time and energy towards achieving them. She stopped doing things that got in the way. She stayed focused.

Are you clear on winning in your business? Do you know what it looks like at the end of 2010 when you have been insanely successful? What are the key operating achievements you will have accomplished; what will your company culture be including in regards to the attitudes, beliefs, values, and operating principles; what skills/knowledge/abilities will exist in your organization; what organizational structures will be in place; what work processes and metrics will be used; what tools, systems and technology are necessary; what products will be in market (existing and new); what products will be in development; who will the customers be; who will the competitors be/what types of companies will you compete against; what will the brand represent?

Get clear on winning, your body will follow.

Is it obvious to you and everyone on your team and in your company what it will take to win a gold medal? If not, what race are you running?


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Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. (www.TheHumanFactor.biz) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking.

Selling Innovation to Your Boss

by Jeffrey Phillips

I've argued before that most firms innovate when faced one of two conditions: fear or greed. The fear factor indicates the firm has explored all other options, and now only the most "radical" option - innovation - remains. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, "when you've eliminated the possible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the answer". And, like Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, I believe many firms innovate when they believe they've spotted an emerging opportunity or new market. In this case, greed is good.

But if all innovation were based on these two drivers, then little innovation would get done. Clearly many firms latch onto innovation as a life preserver, a last ditch effort rather than a strategic focus, but there's more innovation underway than could be accounted for by desperation. And I'm relatively certain that while some firms are good at spotting innovation opportunities and moving aggressively to produce new products and services, they are fairly few and far between. That leaves us with the majority of innovation getting done by the firms in the hazy middle - not really desperate, but not really leading innovators either. If that's the case, what methods do they use to "sell" innovation to the appropriate decisioning individuals or bodies?

Innovation can be "sold" to executives in one of several methods:

1. As a method to increase organic growth, driving new profits
   
2. As a method to disrupt the existing market or adjacent markets, preempting a competitor
   
3. As a method to create significant differentiation within a market space
   
4. As a method to create product or service leadership

These are the hard-headed, rational reasons, and the reasons that organizations tell themselves they innovate. in reality, most firms take on innovation efforts because:

1. An employee created a great idea and we really have no choice but to exploit it
   
2. A competitor has launched a new (product, initiative, campaign) and we need to respond to it
   
3. A senior leader within the firm has made it his/her mission to create an innovation program and the squeaky wheel must be greased

We often find that innovation programs are formed around existing assets - people or ideas - that persist until they must be addressed. Sort of like a plant that must be weeded out or watered. Otherwise, most new innovation efforts are based on a response to what a competitor is doing. This "reactive" innovation is not, in our minds, the best way to innovate, but it may be the best way to sell an innovation program, to give your initiative the final "kickstart" needed to get the funding or resources you need.

Thus, to "sell" innovation you need to:

1. Link it to a corporate objective (growth, differentiation, disruption)
   
2. Build ideas and momentum under the covers
   
3. Demonstrate what your competitors and new market entrants are doing
   
4. Link all three together (strategy, existing momentum, competitive threats) to complete the package

Without all three "legs" of the stool, you'll struggle to gain credibility. Without a strategic linkage any innovation will be incremental point solutions. Without some existing momentum, the work will seem too overwhelming. Without the ability to demonstrate what competitors are doing, you rely on executives who place great emphasis on longer term strategic goals.


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Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of "Make us more Innovative", and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.

Great Leaders Leverage Great Messaging

by Mike Myatt

Great leaders understand the power, influence, and leverage created by great messaging. Do you ever find yourself sitting back and marveling at those leaders who always seem to have the right thing to say? Contrast this with the feelings you have when you hear an awful sound-bite that makes a leader look either uninformed or unintelligent. The difference between the two aforementioned examples is that great leaders have mastered the art of finding the right message regardless of the medium, market, or constituency being addressed. In today's post I'll share some of the messaging secrets used by the best leaders...

So why is great messaging so important? In the business world, as a chief executive officer or entrepreneur, corporate messaging is the key to both your personal and professional positioning strategy. A leader's message has a direct impact on their personal and corporate brand equity, how they manage a crisis, marketing initiatives, investor relations, press and public relations, team building and employee engagement, and virtually any other mission critical area of chief executive responsibility.

The reality is that your messaging will often times have a greater impact on your career than your performance. I have witnessed on numerous occasions CEOs with average, or even sub-par performance histories fare well because they possessed great messaging skills. Let me be clear that I'm not talking about form over substance here. They simply understood how to message their shortcomings and flaws, while engendering confidence around their planning for corrective measures to critical spheres of influence. By contrast, I have also watched CEOs with excellent performance histories not do so well because they did not possess the messaging skills necessary to keep stakeholders engaged. Simply put, the savvy and sophistication of your messaging will have a direct impact on the sustainability of your tenure as a chief executive.

CEOs who become recognized as great leaders are prepared, articulate, consistent, and crisp in their messaging. They speak with authority, clarity, and certitude. Their messaging engenders confidence and serves to inspire and unify. Perhaps most importantly, a great leader's message is never in conflict with their values. They will not compromise their core beliefs simply to manipulate the outcome of a specific situation. They rest in the comfort that doing and saying the right things will ultimately put them in a favorable position, and if not, they are comfortable in assuming any negative consequences that may come as a result of right thinking and decisioning.

When it comes to the construction of messaging, I have found that people will tend to fall into one of the four following groups:

1. The Medium "is" the Message: People that fall into this camp believe that the medium will do the work for them. They believe in the reach and power of the medium to overcome any flaws in the message. This view of messaging constitutes a numbers based approach where the business logic states that if you reach enough people with the message some acceptable percentage of the people reached will embrace the message.


2. The Market "is" the Message: This view of messaging values the target audience above all else. The message is so targeted and nice specific that it is sometimes almost unintelligible to those who fall outside of the intended target market.


3. The Message "is" the Message: This group believes that content is king. The emphasis here is that if the message is creative enough, or valuable enough, nothing else matters. This view of messaging is all about the teaser, the hook, the calls to action, the design, the concept, etc.


4. The Messenger "is" the Message: This is the branded approach to messaging. If the person delivering the message has enough credibility and influence, nothing else matters. This iconic, ego-centric approach to messaging places a high premium on the spokesperson.

My view of the aforementioned four theories is that their sum total value is greater than their independent stand alone value. Other than in matters of character and principle, I don't tend to be an absolutist. Over the years, and especially in the genres of marketing, branding, positioning, and messaging, I believe a collaborative and cross-disciplined approach to be the key to success. While content can create credibility, credibility can also enhance the view of content. Furthermore, the best content or spokesperson in the world communicating to the wrong audience, with the wrong message, or through the wrong medium is likely to miss the mark. It takes a blending of approach to craft the right message and this will not happen when operating in a vacuum. Following are a few final thoughts for your consideration when crafting your message:

1. It Must Be the Truth: The truth always comes out in the end. If your message won't pass public scrutiny over time, then you have the wrong message.


2. Use a Multiple Medium Approach: Long gone are the days of one size fits all mediums. The best messaging campaigns take place across mediums creating multiple touch points to various constituencies and demographics.


3. Know Your Talking Points: Don't allow the message to get lost in the medium. Remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. You must be consistent and convicted in your opinions and your positions. Be clear, concise and don't compromise on key points.


4. Know Your Audience: All messages should be tailored to the audience being addressed. This does not mean you should compromise your position, rather it means your message needs to relevant, timely, and of significance. While your talking points need to remain the same, they also need to address the concerns and areas of interest of those being communicated to.


5. Don't Forget Your Critics: The tendency is to believe that your audience is comprised of friends and allies. You need to assume that every message given will find its way into the hands of your worst critics, and furthermore, that they will attempt to use your message against you.

Good luck and good messaging...


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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Simple Justification for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I stumbled over an interesting paper, "Sourcing External Technology for Innovation", by the Alliance Management Group which has developed lots of great content including the Want--Find--Get--Manage framework below:

• Want - What external resource(s) does the firm want to access from the outside world to meet its strategic intent?


• Find - What mechanisms will the firm use to find these external resources?


• Get - What processes will the firm use to plan, structure and negotiate an agreement to access the resources?


• Manage - What tools, metrics and management techniques will the firm use to implement the relationship?

The article focuses on the Want element of this framework and what I in particular liked is the equation: A + B = C. I have inserted the below edited snippets from the article in order to introduce you to the equation.

We will define our terms:

• Variable A - "Represents the firm's existing 'assets' including its production equipment, core capabilities, intellectual assets, resources and perhaps even its market presence."


• Variable B - "Represents assets that are complementary to the firm's resource base and are only available externally."


• Variable C - "Represents the new product or market offering that goes beyond what the firm is able to deliver utilizing its existing 'assets' alone."

Variable C is a more valuable commercial result that comes from combining the firm's existing 'assets' (Variable A) with those sourced externally (Variable B). This simple equation makes a simple point. If the firm does not access external technology (i.e. there is no Variable B) then Variable C will be limited to what can be achieved using existing capabilities and assets. In other words, Variable C is determined by Variable A.

The goal of the A + B = C equation is to find new value that the firm cannot identify using traditional planning processes. Internal resources (A) retain their prominent role and integrate with external resources (B) to enable a visionary market offering (C) that was unthinkable just yesterday.

When the organization purposefully moves in this direction, senior executives require project managers to redefine C as a variable, enabled by A and B. This is an uncomfortable change for some managers because Variable C is ill-defined, Variable B is fuzzy and Variable A is the only known quantity.


I believe open innovation is about bridging internal and external resources and to identify and execute on the opportunities that arise on this interaction. I like how The Alliance Management Group turns this into an equation and I wanted to share this with you.

Don't forget to read the full article: "Sourcing External Technology for Innovation"


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Killing Innovation by Asking Too Many Questions

by Mark Prus

A recent article on the Harvard Business Review blog site discussed how you can kill innovation by asking too many questions. Having spent over 25 years in Corporate America, I can relate. I have seen many novel ideas get 'Murdered by Management' through a steady stream of questions. I have even seen Management use the "question everything about a project I don't like" technique as a means of wearing out the proposer and making the project go away.

I do agree with the article's conclusion that you can often "...substitute early action for never-ending analysis." It is always a good idea to start small, gain experience, tweak and try it again.

But I am not sure I agree with the premise that asking questions is bad. After all, isn't curiosity a foundation of the innovation process?

When I was running the innovation function of my business unit, I was used to getting a lot of questions about the projects I was working on. What I tried to do was separate the questions I could answer right away and the questions that would take a lot of analysis to answer. I'd keep a list of issues that required further analysis, and attempt to gain understanding via research as the project developed. And I would always report back to Management and give them updates on what I had learned.

Asking questions often reveals new opportunities and potential for upside. And yes, sometimes asking a lot of questions reveals a fatal flaw that kills the project. But when would you rather discover that fatal flaw? Early in the project or after you have committed significant time and energy to it? Isn't that one of the jobs of Management?

Does asking a lot of questions kill innovation? I don't think so. I believe a leader who can handle the 'heat' of the "what about?" questions can deftly manage the questioning and in fact use it to his/her advantage.

What are your thoughts?


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Mark Prus is a marketing consultant who offers a name development service called NameFlash^SM.

Microsoft and Creative Destruction

by Scott Berkun

A recent NYT article by former Microsoft VP Dick Brass has caused quite the stir, but for the wrong reasons. Every follow up article I've read, including one from Microsoft, gets much of it wrong some key things wrong.

The premise: The core point of the Brass article is how the introduction of middle management and bureaucracy has killed innovation at Microsoft.

My counterargument: Microsoft has always been a conservative, platforms company. Visionary design and creative leaders think in terms of great products, which Microsoft has never been good at. Brass assumes the challenges that hampered Tablet PC were new and local, but they have always been there. Microsoft's best, and most creative, work has come when a competitor forced one of the few Renaissance-VPs (VPs who were not over-promoted engineers but actually had a diversity of management skills) to take product design seriously.

My credentials: I worked at MSFT 1994 to 2003. I was on the IE 1.0 to IE 5.0 team among others (Windows, MSN, and MSTE/Best Practices, where I worked with many groups across the company). I wrote a bestselling book about Innovation and I've spoken and consulted with various groups at the company dozens of times since I left in 2003.

My take:

1. The primary problem at Microsoft regarding good design & innovation is the diffusion of creative authority. The problem is not the numbers of people at the company, or the layers of management, as many gripe about. Layers don't help, but it's not the problem. The real issue is the inability to grant creative authority to the few people worthy of it. Microsoft has always been a place that gives way too many people a say in matters of design, vision and user experience, and it shows in the pervasive mediocrity of the majority of its products. Films need directors. Orchestras need conductors. But if you divide things into 30 pieces and ask 30 people to play creative visionary, mediocrity ensues. The better products at Microsoft are the ones where VPs modify the distribution of authority to create clear creative authority.


2. Few VPs are qualified to be creative leaders, at Microsoft or elsewhere. And there is no creative lead role at Microsoft. There never has been. This is not new, it has always been true (at least since 1994 when I started). This is why when brilliant, genius type software designers come to the company, they are baffled by how little creative power they can earn, so they retreat to research or future thinking groups that have no skin in the game (e.g. Bill Buxton, Steve Capps, Ray Ozzie, Jim Gray (RIP), etc.). Microsoft is simply a hard place for to accumulate wide authority over design, which is required to make coherent visions, user experiences and innovations come true. Worse, it's rare for leaders to acknowledge death by too many cooks since those who have never worked elsewhere, and have no conception of creative process, can't imagine any other way. The culture has always been a heavily consensus/collaboration driven place for managers, which waters down ideas, and shifts what goes out the door heavily towards conservation.


3. Management at Microsoft is fat with inbred managers who are not worthy of their title, but this has always been true. If you are hired to manage version 5 of something, you inherit a host of decisions made with skills you do not have, yet get credit for anyway. If the team you inherit does good work, and you happen to be the manager, you receive credit, regardless of how little you did. Entire unprofitable, failed divisions, funded by the rest of the company, promote people out of corporate obligation, creating the existence of middle managers who have never actually successfully managed anything in the marketplace. For the 90s, this was MSN and Consumer products, which were perennial failures. The quality pool of people who managed in those divisions was below average and as the company aged more of these groups were born. Microsoft, like all companies, has suffered from the Peter principle, or worse, perhaps the Paul Principle (people who are lousy at even simple management skills but inherit mediocre projects they don't understand, and simply manage not to get fired via their team's noble but unheralded efforts, which hide their shortcomings). As a result, there are line level managers at Microsoft who are more competent than some middle or senior managers. But this has always been true, given the diversity of the company. It's worse now because of the size.


4. Real layoffs would be a blessing. In 1999 when I left the Internet Explorer team (before the ill-fated IE 6.0 release), I looked around the company for other teams to work on. I couldn't believe how many lost, misguided, sad, self-destructive teams I saw. This was in 1999! The company has more than tripled in size since then. Mini-Microsoft is so clearly on the mark about his core ambitions. I don't wish unemployment on anyone, but I'd say a) the ratio of managers to programmers is insanely out of whack b) The number of projects and divisions that have never made profit and are market laggards is obscene. If the company were split apart, few groups are competent enough to survive a year. This defeats the "strategic value" these properties supposedly have, as dumping of buckets of money earned by Office and Windows profits into their bonfires of incompetence does not a strategy make. You need basic leadership competence, which all too many groups at Microsoft don't have (and many never did).


5. Microsoft's best and most inventive work has often been driven by competition. A visible and serious threat is the only situation where leadership, historically, was forced to be creatively aggressive, giving a chance for creatives to obtain enough power to do good work. Windows 95, Office 95, Internet Explorer 5.0, MS Natural Keyboard, XBOX 360 were all excellent products by most standards, and were made possible by strong competition. The question executives need to ask is why divisions like Mobile & MSN,or the entire Vietnam like 15 year history of imploding efforts of web search (there is a great book to be written by someone about this), have been disasters despite clear and strong competition - this is the analysis to post on every office door at the rest of the company.


6. It's lazy arguing to assume an organization of 10,000 or 100,000 is uniform in any way. Groups at Microsoft have a different culture, and some have been wildly more successful than others (e.g. Office vs. MSN/Live/whatever it's called this week) in part because their leaders have developed superior cultures that diverge widely from other groups. Windows 7 is an excellent product no matter how it stands in comparison to Apple's work, and the turnaround from Windows Vista, which many heralded as the end of MSFT, was beyond noteworthy. If Windows 7 or XBOX 360 is made in the same company that makes all the products you hate, you have to realize the limits of painting broad strokes. This is where many critiques of Microsoft fall short, including the one by Brass. They assume uniformity, projecting a local set of experiences in part of the company as the model for the entire company.


7. If you talk only to people who quit and were disgruntled you can't possibly have the whole story. I've never met Dick Brass, but I know the Tablet PC was a commercial failure. As smart as Dick is, its likely he never understood how IE beat Netscape (it was more than the monopoly stuff), or Office beat Lotus/WordPerfect etc. He also might not know the long history of Windows and Office rejecting most requests from most other teams as a matter of both basic sanity and arrogance. Specific to Tablet PC, it started as a Bill Gates pet project. Working with Bill, who Dick curiously never mentions, was no treat, and unlike Steve Jobs, his direct involvement in matters of design is likely not a godsend. Articles like this one reads too much into corporate policies, as many of them are old (e.g. the review process) and good managers have always had ways to work within these rules to reward good employees. I'd agree the processes could be improved, but all the good VPs find ways to bend rules into loopholes.


8. The greatest disease at Microsoft is lack of sharing lessons from failure, especially where innovation is concerned. Microsoft has made many big, visible bets. Many of them have failed, but that's par for the course. The problem is these expensive lessons are swept under the rug, encouraging others in the company to repeat the same mistakes. Everyone loves to make fun of Microsoft Bob, but few can articulate why it failed. If you don't understand why it failed, you don't have any reason for laughing so hard, and you likely aren't half as smart as you think you are. A case study on Vista, MSN Search, Microsoft Bob, The Tablet PC, etc. should be produced by an outside consultant, and stapled on the forehead of every manager at the company, once a day, until they read them all word for word. Then they'd take advantage of Microsoft's so called experience and wisdom. Otherwise, they are being set up to make the same expensive mistakes again and again.


9. The idea of Innovation, and Innovation Systems, is a distraction. Success in the market is a better scorecard and the most reliable source of criticism. Innovation, as the word is used in these articles, is a matter of taste. You can be very inventive and still get your ass kicked. Or do a great job with mostly conventional ideas, and kick more interesting competitors off the field. Apple, if you study their choices, doesn't pull things out of the sky (digital music players, cell phones, and tablet PCs were all established ideas). They enter games others are already playing and kick their ass. But innovation is the least useful lens. The best criticism of Microsoft's management is how, or how not, they've done against their competitors in terms of customer satisfaction. If innovation matters as much as people seem to claim it does, it's well reflected in either market success or customer satisfaction, so worry more about those solid measures, rather than the ethereal notion of who is innovative and who isn't.

Editor's Note: Scott Berkun will be speaking at The Economist's event - "Innovation Fresh Thinking For the Ideas Economy" at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23-24, 2010. As an added value for our loyal Blogging Innovation readers, we have negotiated a $150 discount when you register using our discount code - "BLINN" - register now.

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Scott Berkun is the bestselling author of "The Myths of Innovation" and "Confessions of a Public Speaker." His blog and lectures can be found at scottberkun.com.

Growing a Garden of Innovation

"Companies are actually living organisms, not machines. We keep bringing in mechanics, when what we need are gardeners." - Peter Senge


by Mitch Ditkoff

Sustainable innovation, the endless effort to find a better way, cannot be achieved by robotically lining up best practices and imitating them. The real catalyzing agent for renewable innovation is the ground from which these best practices spring - the confluence of purpose, people, and processes better known as culture.

From where will the next wave of groundbreaking innovation come?

Not from organizations mechanically mimicking each other's best practices, but from organizations with the authentic commitment to take their stand on ground that has been cultivated for breakthrough.

If you check the contents of the most popular books on innovation, the same topics show up again and again: strategy, systems, process, leadership, customer focus, risk, speed to market, prototyping, metrics, mass collaboration, market intelligence, technology, and creative thinking.

Clearly, all of these topics are important. But none of them can take root in an organization without one fundamental element being in place - a consciously created culture of innovation.

Is such a culture simple to create? Yes. Is it easy? No. And the reason why it is not easy is because the ground of most organizations is hard, untilled, and in major need of clearing.

The metaphor that most clearly conveys the effort required is creating a garden.

To experienced gardeners, the steps needed to create a garden are simple. To the inexperienced gardener, it is a tangle of complexity.

Yes, gardening demands sustained and methodical effort. And yes, sweating comes with the territory. But getting a yield - something to harvest - is a fundamentally straightforward task.

If your company is clear about the effort required, creating a culture of innovation (lets just call it a garden of innovation) is simply a matter of taking the time to execute each step thoroughly 0- in the time honored way gardeners have always practiced their craft.


1. WHET THE APPETITE

If you are serious about being a gardener of innovation, the first thing you will need is hunger - a real appetite for results.

Growing a garden takes sustained effort. It is hard work - most of it unglamorous and unappreciated. Hunger for a yield is the serious gardener's real motivator. Yes, the serious gardener likes being outdoors and, yes, the serious gardener likes getting exercise, but the ultimate product of his/her labors - the harvest - is what it is all about.

Without this level of commitment, the gardening effort remains only a hobby and does not have the roll up your sleeves and get dirty quality so essential to reaping a result.

If your workforce has no appetite for innovation, you will need to find a way to whet it. If you choose not to, people will sit idly by, waiting for R&D, senior leadership, or the tooth fairy to lead the charge. And while they may talk about growth, shovels, and the need for bulk purchase of mulch, talk will not put food on the table.

Fortunately, somewhere, deep inside everyone in your organization is the impulse to create. This impulse is innate. Your task is to awaken this impulse and help people own the effort to innovate. If they do not own the effort, the only thing you will be eating at harvest time will be your own words. (P.S.: Winter is on the way.)


2. STAKE and PREPARE THE GROUND

Amateur gardeners, fueled by visions of ripe tomatoes, have a tendency to plant before they are really ready. Unclear about how large a garden they can sustain, unsure about what is needed to prepare the ground, unable to resist the impulse for a quick yield, they rush in willy nilly.

The result? Lots of wasted effort and the kind of sweating that signifies almost nothing. The same holds true for organizations who claim they want a culture of innovation.

The antidote is a simple, two step process (though the description of the process is much simpler than the execution).

First, an organization needs to get clear about the scope of the effort they want to make. It needs to stake its territory or, more precisely, define the fields in which it wants to innovate. (If it tries to innovate everywhere, all the time, it will only deplete its resources and exhaust its workforce.)

Secondly, it needs to prepare the ground for planting.

This task includes removing obstacles that will interfere with growth, as well as enriching the fertility of the soil. Weekend gardeners cringe at this kind of preparatory effort. It does not feel like fun and there is nothing immediately to show for it. But without this effort there will be no foundation - no ground - for future success.


3. FIND THE SEEDS

You can have ample space to plant a garden. You can know exactly where that ample space is. And you can have lots of fertile soil in this ample space. But unless you have healthy seeds to plant, space is all you will ever have.

If you want a garden of innovation, you need seeds. Not just one kind of seed, but many. Indeed, the more varied seeds you have, the greater your chances for an interesting yield.

In the realm of innovation, ideas are the seeds. All innovation begins with an idea. Ideas are the fuzzy front end of the innovation process - the alpha and omega of new growth. No ideas, no innovation. Its that simple.

The big question, then, is this: Where will your company get its new ideas? Is there an existing process? And if so, is this process working? Can you count on your workforce to deliver high quality, game changing ideas? Or is there something else you need to be doing in order to tap their brilliance?


4. PLANT THE SEEDS

While it is true that some seeds, spontaneously carried by the wind and landing on fertile soil, find a way to plant themselves, most gardens require that seeds be planted in a more dependable way.

If your company is sincere about its intention to create a culture of innovation, it will need to refine its seed planting process. More specifically, it will need to establish a more effective way for the carriers of seeds to increase the odds of those seeds taking root.

Yes, aspiring innovators will need to become more adept at pitching/planting their ideas. But at the same time, the people to whom new ideas are being pitched will need to become more receptive to the possibility that something new is worthy of taking root.

Having a silo of healthy seeds is a good start, but ultimately those seeds need to be planted - and they need to be planted in a way that will radically increase the odds of them growing into seedlings.


5. FENCE THE GARDEN

If you have ever planted a garden, you have experienced the phenomenon of uninvited predators showing up at all hours to devour your tender, young seedlings. Deer, raccoons, moles, rabbits, and a host of other unidentifiable varmints seem to have no other mission in life but to downsize your dreams of winning the state fair or, at the very least, eliminate all possibility of you having fresh lettuce for dinner. It comes with the territory. And it will continue to come with the territory unless you fence your garden.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes experience the same phenomenon.

Promising new business growth ideas - the tasty indicators of breakthrough innovation - are routinely devoured by ravenous corporate naysayers. That is, unless the organization finds a way to protect their aspiring innovators.

Your role, as a gardener of innovation, is to fence your garden and protect your people from the overly acidic scrutiny, doubt, and premature evaluation of predominantly left brained, metric driven, analytical inhibitors of innovation. It can be done. It must be done. And you are the one to champion the process.


6. TEND NEW GROWTH

Conceiving a garden is relatively easy. It requires no special skills, discipline, or education. Anyone can do it. Indeed, anyone does do it every single Spring and Summer. Getting a harvest, however, is an entirely different matter. It is not so easy - and unlike conception, requires skill, discipline, resources, and the ability to learn on the job.

In the same way, conceiving new ideas is relatively easy. It happens every day of the year to millions of people. Bringing them to fruition is not so easy. Along the way, they get neglected, mishandled, and trampled on. What starts out as a brilliant new possibility, often shrivels on the vine. Most organizations have no conscious process for nurturing the growth of new ideas.

As a result, many powerful, new ideas never mature.

They may break new ground, but they do not necessarily flower and bear fruit. The good news? It does not have to be this way. With the right kind of sustained effort, gardeners of innovation can dramatically increase the odds of exciting new ideas becoming part of the harvest and making it to market.


7. THIN and TRANSPLANT

Inexperienced gardeners, intoxicated by their need for a big harvest and overcompensating for their fear of having nothing to show for their efforts, tend to plant too many seeds too close together. Their fear usually dissipates in a few weeks when the first sprouts emerge, but then another challenge surfaces - what to do with the apparent bounty of new growth?

While the profusion of greenery certainly looks good to the untrained eye, the reality is different. New seedlings start competing with each other for water and nutrients. Roots entangle. Left unaddressed, the results are disappointing - row after row of stunted, scraggly plants.

Savvy gardeners respond quickly, thinning out new growth to make room for a select number of the healthiest plants to flourish.

Really savvy gardeners go one step further - transplanting the healthiest of the thinned out plants to new, roomier locations.

Organizations trying to raise the bar for innovation face the same challenge. Intoxicated by their need for impressive growth (and wanting to involve as many employees as possible in the process), they get overwhelmed by a profusion of ideas and initiate too many projects - ideas and projects that end up competing for the same, finite resources.

The result? Scraggly, stunted, and undeveloped ventures.

The antidote? A clear strategy for how their organization will evaluate, select, and fund new initiatives - along with a process for identifying promising new growth to be transplanted for future development.


8. CELEBRATE THE HARVEST

All cultures around the world have a holiday, ritual, or ceremony dedicated to expressing gratitude for the bounty of the harvest. In their bones, they understand the purpose, power, and privilege of giving thanks. Their recent harvest may have fed the body, but the collective acknowledgment of the harvest feeds the soul, strengthening everyones resolve to begin the growing process again the next season.

Corporate cultures could learn a lesson or two from this age old practice.

Historically, organizations have been severely lacking when the time comes to acknowledge the harvest and the people whose efforts were essential to manifesting that harvest. The endless demand for output drives most business leaders to conclude that acknowledging successes is a waste of time - a luxury no bottom line watching organization could afford. Somehow, deep within the collective psyche of senior leaders, lurks the fear that celebrating successes will invariably lead to a fat and lazy workforce.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

People flourish when their efforts are acknowledged - not only individually, but as an entire workforce. If you are serious about establishing a sustainable culture of innovation, remember to take the time to acknowledge your gardeners. For their effort. For their resilience. For their collaboration. And for whatever harvest they are able to manifest.

Food for thought?


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Mitch Ditkoff is the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions and the author of "Awake at the Wheel", as well as the very popular Heart of Innovation blog.

Five "Must-Haves" for a Strategic Plan

by Holly G. Green

Strategic planning methodologies are like shoes - one size does not fit all.

Some companies use a top-down, autocratic approach, where the plan gets created by a small group of senior managers and handed down to the rest of the organization. Some prefer a more democratic approach, with employees at all levels contributing their ideas and input to the plan. Most companies employ a hybrid of these two models.

The best approach for your company depends on several factors, such as size, industry, culture, type of workforce and management style. Regardless of which approach you choose, however, every strategic plan needs five key elements in order to achieve the intended results.

1. Mission. This defines why you exist as an organization. Specifically, it tells others (not just those in the organization) why you exist. Ideally, it describes some noble purpose that is both inspirational and aspirational, so that it instills pride in all those connected with the organization.


2. Guiding principles. Also called organizational attributes, these describe how you expect people to behave with each other and with other stakeholder groups. Guiding principles broadly define which types of behaviors are acceptable and which behaviors will not be tolerated. In particular, they describe how you will behave when faced with difficult situations or challenges.


3. Value propositions. These explain the value you provide to your organization's different stakeholder groups, both internal and external. For example, why do customers buy from you? Why do employees come to work for your organization? What kind of return can shareholders expect? How does your community benefit from the work you do?


4. Destination points. These identify where your organization wants to go within a specified time frame. This is perhaps the most critical element in the whole process because the more clearly you define your desired end state, the greater your chances of getting there.


5. Areas of focus/strategies. These define, in a broad sense, how the organization will get to where it wants to go. They are the three to five areas everyone should be focused on to get to the destination points. What cuts across several destination points; where should the majority of energy be focused; what must everyone keep in mind as they make investments in people and other resources; and, what guides you on what to do and not to do are the core questions answered.

These five elements form an essential foundation for the strategic planning process. If even one of these bedrock elements is missing, your chances for success become marginal at best.

Once these elements are in place, the next step involves action planning and breakthrough modeling to determine what it will take to get to where you want to go. Here is where you get down to the nitty-gritty to figure out what organizational capabilities (systems, tools, processes, people and technologies) are needed to reach your destination points. Effective strategic planning also requires that you set goals and define team and individual accountabilities, as these link the big picture to individual goals and competencies.

Ultimately, strategic planning is like a jigsaw puzzle - all the pieces must be in place in order to complete the picture. The mission and guiding principles inspire and energize employees, while creating pride and connection throughout the organization. The value propositions provide a touchstone for staying focused on what matters to stakeholders. The destination points provide clear goals and milestones that provide the big picture employees want and need. And the strategies/areas of focus create alignment and ensure that everyone in the organization is working toward the same goal.

Have you got your five must-have's in place? And is everyone clear on what they are?


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Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. (www.TheHumanFactor.biz) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking.

Is Innovation a Fad?

by Jeffrey Phillips

I had a rather disconcerting part in a recent discussion with some senior leaders and executives who were discussing innovation. It was interesting to hear from some of them that they believe "innovation" is a fad, and will run its course shortly. They believe that innovation is simply another "quick fix" elixir cooked up by management consultants to find new things to sell to senior executives. Some others in the discussion believed that innovation is more systemic, and will have a longer shelf life, and add value for many years to come. I found myself disagreeing with both schools of thought.

The cynics suggest that innovation is simply a buzz word for creating new products or services, something that many firms already do. In that regard they view innovation as the current flash in the pan, meant to distract everyone from the real problems and place a nice bow on a box that already exists. To these cynics I say - you couldn't be more wrong. In a market that is moving and changing as quickly as the one we are experiencing now, and an environment where consumers are demanding more, and better, products and services, and in a production environment where any new idea can be copied fairly quickly, the only real winners are those who create substantially new concepts on a consistent basis. The old, static product lives and days of lower competition are over. Innovation isn't a "nice to have" or a "flash in the pan", it is rapidly becoming the most important skill set your organization can acquire.

For those who believe innovation does add value and can be more systemic, I say they are right, but only partly so. They see innovation as a tool that can be used, until the next tool comes along. This follows the theory of "waves". There was the "wave" of quality improvement, followed by the "wave" of rightsizing and outsourcing. Now, these folks believe, is the time for the "wave" of innovation, which will run its course and introduce a new wave of something else yet unseen. The problem with considering innovation as a wave with a specific time horizon is that new products and services will continue to be important long after the expected time frame of the "wave" is complete. If your investment is to simply adopt innovation as the next tool down the pike, and expect to jettison it once the wave is over, your team won't commit the necessary resources to innovate effectively. It will be a sideline to the "real work" of the organization, eagerly awaiting the next wave or fad.

No, here's where I diverge from the discussion. We are in a fundamental environmental shift. The pace of change and the increase in global competition means that the way we work has to change. Innovation isn't an interesting sideshow or fad, unless your management team allows it to be. Innovation isn't a wave or trend for the next "x" years to be replaced by something else. Innovation is THE differentiator between firms that are thriving and healthy today, and those that will be thriving and healthy a decade from now, because innovation isn't a fad, and isn't a wave, but is going to become a permanent way of life, a sustaining capability for the firms that understand the shift underway and adopt innovation as a cultural imperative.

If you think this doesn't matter then simply consider the culture and environment of the organization where you'd most like to work. Do you want to work in a firm that places emphasis on the future and staying abreast of trends and new ideas, or do you want to work in a firm where the constant activity is reacting to what other firms do in the market? The most innovative firms will attract the best people and accelerate their capabilities, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The firms with less innovation skill will atrophy because they can't compete on new ideas, and they can't generate new products and services fast enough to retain customers.

What's it going to take for us to wake up and realize that innovation is the most important skill we can gain within most organizations? I recognize that this kind of change threatens the status quo, but if we ignore the shifts underway in the market and economy we risk a future with far fewer jobs and far fewer opportunities.


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Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of "Make us more Innovative", and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.