Advancing Innovation. Patrick J. Stroh
are a number of conclusions you are likely to take away from reading this book. These are the keys to galvanizing, enabling, and measuring—keep them in mind as you are reading.
Galvanizing Keys
When setting the tone and galvanizing the organization to be ready for innovation efforts, remember that relationships matter and are a key to success. Consider the shadow you cast. Be a leader that sets the right tone at the top—a tone that stresses the importance of balance both in risk and rewards.
Employees frequently perceive finance and accounting executives as focusing only on “cost reduction.” Make sure that it is clear what happens with cost savings. Also ensure that not all business challenges or other innovation initiatives are centered on cost reduction. Cost reduction is good, but costs and efficiencies are only one focus area.
Don’t take on a cultural challenge all by yourself! If you need to implement some change or provide clarity on cultural norms and expectations, you may need to do this work first in order that subsequent innovation value can be achieved. Implementing world class tools and mechanisms in an environment that isn’t ready, supportive, or tolerant of them will only lead to failure. Be sure you have galvanized appropriately!
While we always want the CEO to show support for any new effort or project, I believe it is a must-have with regard to innovation— especially if your company has a hard driving, performance-oriented culture. Failure typically is not accepted, and people know that. The CEO needs to stand up and say, “We still value being a high-performance company, and in doing so, we need to be better at taking calculated risks. We want to support innovation efforts, and we realize that will sometimes lead to failure. It’s okay to fail— just fail fast and learn from it. We will be better off in the long run and create more value.” Steve Jobs said, “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.” Imagine your CEO making a statement similar to this to the troops. It’s permission to try and fail, yet a reminder to be thoughtful and careful. Whatever the specific message, the tone comes from the top. Set the tone!
Enabling Keys
When you begin to enable the company to innovate, be aware of the differences: different people, different companies, different leaders, and different channels. Recognize and respect these various differences, account for them in your design and implementation of innovation channels, and capitalize on your business’s strengths.
Be aware of your employees’ biggest strengths and how best to leverage them. Implementing multiple innovation channels is a good way to do this. Different employees and functional areas have different natural skills and strengths, and they will respond to these channels differently.
Many people can be creative given the right environment and some encouragement. For example, front-line folks, those closest to the customer, have ideas based on what they see every day. Tap into these people and find ways to make them feel good about sharing and innovating!
Communicate, communicate, and communicate to enable the organization. Don’t let ideas or submissions of any kind go into a “black hole.”
When you try multiple channels, not all may succeed. Try, test, adjust, succeed, or fail, and then move forward. Don’t be impatient; give them a chance, but don’t beat a dead horse.
Measuring Keys
When measuring innovation, the old adage applies, “Garbage in equals garbage out.” When implementing innovation channels and programs, consider data integrity, the ability of having repeatable capture processes and reporting of that information, and clarity in measuring and calculating innovation value.
If you don’t measure, you can’t improve. And if you don’t share the results after you measure, nobody knows or understands the results, leading to (usually negative) speculation. Measure, improve, share, and repeat!
Sharing with “the street” (public constituents) is another matter. Be smart, honest, and thoughtful in distinguishing between internal and confidential intelligence vs. information that is ready to be shared more broadly, just like in any other reporting you prepare.
Measuring innovation has historically not been easy. IVS is meant to help give finance, accounting, and all leaders a standard innovation system to use as a yardstick to better measure, compare, and improve innovation levels and give them clear actions to take. Try it and see if it better defines innovation value and pinpoints areas in which you can drive more business value for your constituents.
Beginning to measure results is the beginning, not the end. Measuring doesn’t just tell you who won the game; it tells you if you are winning or losing in the larger game of fulfilling your vision and achieving your mission.
We all can work on our tendency to say no and find more ways to “get to yes,” especially if it drives value in our organizations. There is a great insight in Innovation at the Speed of Laughter: “When we say yes first, we are not saying we should approve a budget, staffing or the idea will be automatically implemented.” Give yourself permission to say “Yes” to an idea and explore it a bit. The rigorous evaluation can come later.
As you begin to read through this book, find ways to GET TO YES in your thinking, application, and adoption of these processes and recommendations. Getting to yes translates to getting to innovation value creation in your organization—and isn’t value creation at the core of why your organization exists?
PART I Innovation—A Call to Action
Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that are not and ask why not?
—Robert Kennedy
I believe the call to action around innovation has never been stronger than it is today. Why? Because in addition to IMA’s research on innovation, there is other research and discussion that talks about how companies wish they could innovate more, better, and faster and generate more value creation. A 2015 McKinsey poll stated that “94% of the managers surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their company’s innovation performance.”1 And 3M has declared that “Innovation is a survival issue.”2 Clearly, as businesses look inside their four walls, they are not happy and feel the pressure to innovate.
But the really scary fact of this call to action is what is happening externally. The world is moving faster than ever before! It seems like every generation says “We are going through a rate of change faster than ever before.” I think that has probably been true—technology, globalization, and other factors have had us on a perpetual treadmill that seems to go faster and faster each year, month, week, and day! A general rule of thumb in business used to be that you need to reinvent your value proposition about every 10 years to stay relevant, profitable, and competitive. Of course that varies from industry to industry, and disruptive technologies, legislation, and political environments can all cause turbulence; but, as a rule, 10 years was about average. New research says the 10-year rule is dead, that the new rule is you need to reinvent your business and value proposition about every five years, which correlates with the IMA research.3
Five years!!! The research doesn’t say you have to totally reinvent yourself and introduce new breakthrough innovations and products every five years, but if you are not advancing your core value proposition after five years, you are going to be a shrinking business and less relevant. Your best days will be behind you, not in front of you. McKinsey also lightly touched on this fact when it said, “In the digital age, the pace of change has gone into hyper speed, so companies must get these strategic, creative, executional and organizational factors right to innovate successfully.”4 Many thought leaders are saying it: The