Category: innovation strategy

Where to focus next?

A few of my clients are preparing to wind down their manufacturing and engineering activities for the Christmas break. This is especially true for my clients in the Southern Hemisphere, where at least half of December is the holiday season. Clients with a retail business model are most likely now planning for the busiest time of the year.

My message today is mainly for the manufacturers heading for a slower season.

What have you ignored or pushed aside during the year because there were other priorities? Take some of these neglected issues and put them on the agenda for discussion with your team. These less-urgent issues could hold value in challenging your assumptions and maybe even your priorities.

These issues are lower priority until something goes wrong. If you could afford to ignore these issues up to now, the chances are that you will again ignore them in the new year. However, ignoring issues that matter to some of your clients or staff or that deserve attention, but there is none to give should simply get attention so that you are not caught off-guard.

So, let me try to rephrase my question.

What issue or topic have you ignored, postponed or delayed?

If addressed, which issues will release energy or build trust in your company?

Suppose you cannot explore these issues because you constantly have more important stuff to attend to. In that case, I urge you to delegate these to people you trust, especially if these issues are important to others in your company. Perhaps by giving somebody else a chance to lead on a matter they care about would boost their confidence and reveal new talent and passion in your organisation.

Strategy means saying “No!”

At the start of this year, I want to share some advice I received from Prof David Maister many years ago. David Maister was an early podcaster in the 2000s and I loved listening to his podcast.

Maister argued that many leaders are trained to say “yes” and then they get stretched so thin that they can no longer be effective. This is probably made worse by a wrong understanding of what servant leadership is about, but that is another story for another day.

Maister’s advice was to say “no”. You do not have to justify your decision unless it is really important. It means that you will have more energy and attention span for the things that remain. Of course, knowing more or less what you are striving for helps to know what to turn down.

If leaders struggle to say no, we can be assured that everybody following the leaders will also be confused, or possibly stretched. In organisations, like a company, this may result in many employees also overcommitting themselves.

Does everybody that depends on your leadership know what to say “no” to? Do they clearly understand what you do not want, or what you think should not receive priority attention? Maybe it is more important to clearly signal what is undesirable than to constantly explain to everyone what your intent is.

I want to challenge my friends, my clients and my fellow innovators. Say “no” first. Be clear about what is off-limits, and about what is a low priority (or not your priority). Then it is easier for everybody else to try and figure out what is desirable, or what is possible with the resources we all have.

If you are too polite to say NO, then say, “I don’t think this commitment would be possible, but I will come back to you in 24 hours with a firm answer”. Then keep your promise to give an answer the next day. Sometimes creating a little space to think will help you figure out whether you really need to agree, or whether you can stick with your “no”!

How you can use Slack and MS Teams to foster knowledge management and information sharing

I am a member of several Slack and MS Teams workspaces, and I am often struck by how little organisations I work with invest in making these digital workspaces valuable instruments to nurture ideas, develop knowledge in a distributed way or share information in a way that saves people time. 

I prefer Slack over Teams, but that is just my opinion. Many of the teams I work with do not have much of choice as their IT departments prefer MS Teams because of its integration with other Microsoft applications.

Digital workspaces as places of sharing information and coordinating activities

Many of these digital workspaces of the organisations I support are almost used more as an extended SMS/Whatsapp communication platform than as an instrument for accumulating knowledge fragments or a distributed learning platform. What I mean is that even when teams have different channels configured, the content of these channels is often more like a short message service. Occasionally documents, URLs or photos are shared, sometimes with a note explaining why people should bother to read it, and other times without any contextual information. There are often long periods between posts, followed by a flurry of activity as the importance of topics increases or wane.

When users express frustration with these platforms, it is usually because they cannot find the right channel to post their contributions to. Or they find the thread structure to be confusing. I find it annoying when people do not reply in a thread of a question, as it clutters a channel with statements that are incoherent and messy. For me, these workspaces are valuable repositories not just of decisions made or actions taken but about context and arguments for and against specific courses of action.

A few drawbacks of digital workspaces

A drawback is that both MS Teams and Slack only allow for a one-level deep threaded conversation, which is very shallow. So, I can reply to your post, but if somebody comments on my reply, then their message is at the same level in the thread as mine. Perhaps this is a good thing because I do not miss the 10-level deep-threaded conversations on the old bulletin boards. Another drawback is that people can quickly shoot down any contributions that somebody else has made without substantiating their claims or contributing to the building out of the idea. I guess this is a challenge with all social media.

Despite these drawbacks, digital workspaces offer an opportunity for teams to improve how they accumulate and develop shared ideas in ways that exceeds what is possible when people are physically working together. Furthermore, these platforms enable teams to both to converge around shared ideas and thematic areas while also encouraging broader scanning and information sharing. By encouraging people to surface small ideas (or weak signals) from within their work domains and the topics they are interested in, new combinations of knowledge modules and ideas can be combined and further developed. By encouraging people to share information, news, photos, impressions and developments from beyond the organisation, potential new networks, topics and trends are made more visible. It thus enables both convergences of interests in the form of deeper conversations and the continuous adjustment of shared mental models while simultaneously encouraging divergence and the exploration of signals from beyond the immediate operational focus of the organisation. It helps a lot if people not only share a link or a document, but a paragraph or a short commentary and what they found interesting or who they think would benefit from reading it.

Workspaces intending to build a community and strengthen its members

In some of the digital workspaces I am active in, the workspace has an intent that goes beyond chatting and just sharing interesting links or documents. Rather, the intent is to build communities around different ideas, topics and activities, and to encourage the members to not only use the content shared in the workspace, but draw in members to contribute to, challenge ideas and use the information shared in their daily practice. In these workspaces, there are channels where people share ideas, links to videos and links to articles that are relevant to many members. But members can ask for help, share personal updates, form their own channels or just visit a channel out of curiosity. What I like about these workspaces is that people don’t just share short messages, they write short essays or mini-blogs about a given topic. And then somebody else writes a response in the form a a short essay. So, when somebody shares a link to a resource, they usually explain why they thought it was interesting or valuable to share. You can read these channels and benefit from the cumulative and unfolding exchange that happened over hours, days or even months.

Some ideas on making the navigation of channels easier

In the better-working shared workspaces there are often channels that are maybe more relevant to sub-groups that are interested in specific topics or themes. Still, these groups are open, so others can observe or just follow the conversation, or leave when they lose interest or have other priorities. I call these topical channels because I can join one of these channels and get an idea of what the sub-community is discussing, what questions people have about the content, and how dynamic the contributions to and uptake of ideas are. Over time, these channels become valuable repositories of ideas, information and resources. (Did you know that Slack is an acronym for “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge” that was coined by its founder Steward Butterfield?)

I have found that it works well to make a distinction between topical channels, where content, ideas and concepts are discussed, and projects, where people have to work together and where the discussion combines content but also correspondence around dates, tasks, reminders and other project-related chatter. It is not so practical to combine a project channel (that might require fast and frequent communications) with the slower process of exchanging on the content or accumulating different perspectives on a given subject. Whenever I am asked to curate workspaces, I try to split the operations (projects) from the subject or content (topical) channels and also from the more focused or private channels where just a few selected people participate in.

How we organise our channels in Mesopartner

In our Mesopartner Slack workspace, we have denoted channels for topics by starting the channel name with “tp”, “proj” and “Support”. 

  • Tp is for topics that some of us are interested in, like #tp_innovation_systems or #tp_facilitation. 
  • Proj represents projects that we are working that is focused on certain projects that some of us are working on. 
  • Support is where we help each other for instance #support_apps_software, #support_online_meetings or #support_slack. 

Because our enterprise spans over countries and timezones, we also have a series of channels for admin, contracts and sharing of travel plans. For instance, I usually check the the #travel channel first every day because all our members share itineraries there. We often share photos and impressions from the places we visit and the people we work with.

My favorite channel is #working_out_loud, where we all regularly share with others what we have planned for the day, and what is in our minds as we start a day. I make a point of posting a message everyday about “what is on my mind this morning” or “what tasks I have dedicated myself to today”. This is not only of interest to my business partners, it even helps me to keep track of my commitments, and my mental state over time.

During the COVID lockdowns we had a #coping_with_covid channel that had a mix of humor but also more serious content in it. After the lockdowns ended, this channel was renamed to #coping_with_external_shocks, and we typically share news from the environments or places where we are working in that channel. 

Beyond sharing – workspaces as decentralised decision-making and knowledge development platforms

Beyond using these workspaces for communications and information sharing, these platforms can be valuable for organisations where the workforce is distributed across space. I recall listening to a podcast interview of Shane Parish with Matt Mullenweg that made a deep impression on me. Matt is the founder of WordPress and Automattic. During the interview, he explained how they used a WordPress-based platform called P2 to enable work teams to develop code, manage projects and make decisions over dozens of timezones and locations in a distributed manner. From Matt, I heard about the concept of asynchronous meetings, where meetings are recorded (in video with transcripts) so that employees in other locations/timezones could listen to the meetings at their own time and then contribute their ideas, suggestions, questions and contributions in the P2 workspace. Matt argues that the idea that everybody must be present to participate in online or physical meetings is a relic of the past. I really love this idea, but I have not worked with any organisation yet using this form of decision-making and content development. But if you think of it, COVID has digitised so many workplaces so fast, yet we still hang on to these old rituals of scheduled meetings, decisions made during meetings, etc.

Perhaps more within our reach is the WordPress approach of using internal blogs or short essays on their P2 workplace channels for technical teams running development projects to share updates, reflect on code, to pose questions and to set priorities. Matt argues that this is very important in their organization, that is both global and yet very local. To make this work, we have to shift from working in shared documents (like MS Word) to working in shared workspaces in the form of blog posts, comments and questions in our topical channels. WordPress uses these internal essays or blogs to transfer updates, progress, snags and experience from one area/timezone/topic to others. It is a cumulative way of building on the ideas expressed by others.

In closing

You may wonder why I wrote a whole blog post about this topic. For me, this post is about reflecting on how most of the organisations I work with develop ideas together and foster shared knowledge development. Most organisations I work with describe themselves as knowledge-intensive, their employees are called knowledge workers. They are promoting the uptake, development and dissemination of new knowledge and technology in the environments they work in. I must be honest; quite a few of the organisations I work with are terrible at fostering ideas, turning concepts into knowledge modules, keeping track of external developments or having any form of distributed knowledge brewery going on. No wonder their workspaces are not the primary place where their people not only learn, but contribute to and get inspiring ideas from.

I run for the door when asked to share a success story, write a case study or contribute to the results management system, and so do many others I know. This is an extremely formal way of capturing knowledge that often leaves out the most important arguments and alternatives that had to be explored along the way.

To be effective in what we do as knowledge intermediaries is that we have to start by fostering workspaces where people can nurture ideas, share information, challenge and contrast ideas, and have deep conversations that allow for the emergence of more coherent mental models and knowledge modules. Not everybody can explain themselves in a meeting, and the online workspace allow people to take their time to organise their thoughts, or to just drop a concern, question or a contribution into a larger conversation.

Building a knowledge community that builds its members is a cumulative process enabled by digital workplaces provided by Slack and MS teams (and WordPress P2 and others). These online workspaces that are now almost ubiquitous are one of the most powerful tools at our disposal to foster distributed cognition, idea nurturing, decentralised creation, history of ideas tried and ongoing knowledge module development. Matt Mullenweg would argue that these workspaces enable distributed decision-making that is far more inclusive than our traditional ways of making decisions, arguing in real-time, and requiring everybody to be present when information is shared, alternatives are explored, or decisions are made.

Let me know how you are going to challenge the way your organisation’s digital workspace supports the generation of brewing of new ideas and concepts, the scanning of the horizon for threats, opportunities and weak signals of change, and perhaps even enabling a more distributed form of alternative development, decision-making and information sharing.

The image for this blog post is titled “Into the Jaws of Death — U.S. Troops wading through water and Nazi gunfire”, circa 1944-06-06”. It was taken by Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHoM) Robert F. Sargent.

This image or file is a work of a United States Coast Guard service personnel or employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain (17 U.S.C. § 101 and § 105, USCG main privacy policy and specific privacy policy for its imagery server).

How to kickstart innovation in my team?

This is the question that I receive most often from leaders. Where do I start with improving innovation in my organisation or department?

Often this goes along with a sigh and a statement like “once upon a time we were very innovative, but then we settled down”.

Often, the leaders that ask me about innovation somehow feel that their own lack of creativity and courage has led to the stagnation of innovation in their area of responsibility. Instead of teaching leaders some of my favourite innovation tricks, concepts or methods, I use this opportunity to rather try and shift their attention to creating the conditions for innovation.

Now innovation tricks, methods and concepts are in oversupply. Just go to the business section in any bookstore and you will find lots of recipe books. But these tricks and recipes are less important if one can induce a cultural shift towards exploration, responsibility and learn about what is possible.

So here is the advice that I regularly dish out.

As a leader, you do not have to announce that things will be different from here on. This just makes it harder for you and the team to learn about what is possible. Also, announcing a new vision and strategy puts the focus on your brilliant strategic skills. Rather avoid this.

Instead, start by modelling what you want your organisational culture to be. Again, no announcements.

Without much fuss, ask some of your teams or leaders

“if you could prioritise investment (time, money, people) in any area of this organisation, where would you want to explore?”.

Then agree on a budget with the people taking responsibility, a time frame, what resources they would need, and feedback mechanisms (how will we which ideas are working, and which are not working as desired). Encourage them to start soon, but to manage their usual responsibilities as well. Now your job is to help the rest of the organisation, like finance, admin, marketing, production or communications to adapt their support offerings and procedures to help this exploration effort. Make sure this effort receives all the support and resources that they need. Use the innovative efforts of one group to also be creative about other areas of the organisation. Your attention might be more valuable in getting the rest of the organisation to adapt and learn.

Dave Snowden always reminds us that in uncertain contexts, we should encourage the development of portfolios of safe-to-fail experiments. Single experiments are almost like bets in a casino, while portfolios help us to become more aware of constraints and our ability to influence systems. Challenge your team to come up with a small portfolio of experiments that can be tried to explore or better understand the area of exploration they have chosen. A safe-to-fail experiment is low-risk, meaning that even failure becomes valuable because it tells us about the system. Encourage the team to reflect regularly on the portfolio of experiments, and allow them to allocate resources from those that appear to be giving desirable results while dampening those experiments that appear to be going in the wrong direction. Perhaps you can also try to encourage people from other parts of your organisation to participate or closely follow the process, but do not let the exploration team get too big as this might slow it down or make learning through failure more socially risky. You can always wait a few days and then encourage another team in another area to also identify an area of exploration.

With this effort, you will encourage the practice of reflecting on the performance of the organisation and how different work areas support or enable innovation. Also, you will build the confidence of teams to set their own priorities in improving sub-systems, routines and arrangements, and to then manage their own innovation projects. By encouraging the development of portfolios of safe-to-fail experiments, you are accelerating the distributed learning in the organisation about what is possible and what is harder to do. At the same time, you are raising the awareness in the organisation of how efforts, energy and other patterns are interrelated.

Finally, you will also model that your role is to synthesize the support from other parts of the organisation. Your role is not to be the lead innovator or lead expert, but to be the conductor and chief innovation space creator.

Maybe this is the punch line. When organisations don’t innovate anymore, it is most likely because of too much management. Perhaps your past efforts of creating stability and structures have now become too rigid (or too successful – gasp!)

Instead of taking charge of innovation, encourage your people to explore in a structured way, to learn about what is possible in their areas of work. Your role is to encourage people to set priorities, and then let them learn about what is possible through portfolios of safe-to-fail experiments. In organisations that have become very set in its routines and systems, your job would most likely be to make sure the rest of the organisation can adapt where needed. But again, you don’t have to change the rules. Let the admin, finance, HR and operations people assess how the systems and procedures may be making innovation, novelty creation and improvement harder based on the focused innovation efforts of your teams. Rather than protect the systems, protect the innovators. You can manage the risk by ensuring that all experiments are safe-to-fail and low risk.

Go try this and let me know how it goes. Remember, the secret is to not announce this as something new. It is not a new vision. It is not a new strategy. Rather just model this behaviour of focused exploration, encouraging people to take responsibility for areas where they want to see better results. Make sure that all supporting functions are adapting and evaluating their own systems based on the learning from the innovation efforts. Then focus on making sure all the innovation efforts have the resources to implement their ideas, and the encourage innovators and support functions to learn from those efforts that don’t go so well.

You have just kickstarted your innovation culture.

After doing this for a while, any innovation recipe book will give you some tools, tricks and hacks that will work much better once more of your people are able to create, evaluate and learn about their role in your organisation’s innovation culture.

Image by tayphuong388 from Pixabay

Now is the time to think about what is next after what is next

Updated and improved on 18 April 2020, Originally published, March 19 2020

I have found the past month a bit surreal, to say the least. When I travelled through an international airport at the end of January I saw paramedics treating a person who had collapsed. The paramedics were not wearing masks and gloves, while a gaping growing crowd gathered to watch, despite the fact that they already knew about the Covid-19 virus. That was the moment when I realised that I would have to suspend my travels for a while.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received many calls and emails from business and government leaders asking me to help them to think through their options. Some even asked for scenarios. First, let me explain why just jumping straight to scenarios is not a good idea right now with all the contradictory information we are being inundated with.

With all the uncertainty and confusion right now, public and business leaders need some vision of the future to work towards. Hence the image of this blog is a meerkat looking away from whatever the others are occupying themselves with. But different leaders have slightly different motivations. While some people require very little information to make decisions, others need lots of evidence and data. The first group are most likely the innovators and creators of new markets and business models, while the second group may be those that are more focused on incrementally improving what already exists or what is in place. I will refer to the first group as the innovators and the second group as the system optimisers.

We need both innovators and system optimisers to create the future, but they are driven by different motivations and often take different paths if you do not get them to explore a shared mental map. The first group, the innovators, needs a problem to explore and space to try new things, while the system optimisers need a target to reach and sufficient authority over resources to get there. The system builders will look at the facts and data and will think you are crazy if you want to talk about a post-crisis positioning strategy. The innovators will go nuts if you ask them to improve the system when they feel that the way the world works is being questioned. You need these groups to work together – one shared picture, and different yet complementary skills.

So if I had to help your team think about the options right now, a first step would be to think of what could possibly happen next. Yes, it is that simple. Maybe it takes only a few minutes. But this gives us some possible trajectories, and we can explore the ups and downs of each. At least we then have some options to choose from.

I agree that looking at the immediate options is not enough. That is too short term. So we have to ask a second round of “what’s next?” questions and try to explore the decision branches from the previously identified possibilities. Now the innovators can start thinking about new arrangements, new connections, new formulations of what already exists. The system builders will most likely already be a little frustrated with all the hypothetical talk, so they need to be enabled to start thinking of what must be decided or put in place to go down certain paths while avoiding others.

I know this is very simplistic, but my experience right now is that it is very hard to ask people to think six months or three years in advance. But for us to shape what is coming, we have to get more leaders thinking about what is emerging and what is emerging after what is next. This is hard to type, but it is even harder to ponder.

I know that some of my mentors, like Dave Snowden, will baulk at me even proposing a two-by-two matrix as the basis for a scenario exercise, so I hope he will not see this post. Using a simple matrix is a straightforward way to get people to think of alternatives that they struggle to consider if you don’t take them on a structured thinking journey.

Here is a simple scenario matrix that I have been using this week to guide some of my clients. They are all facing a lot of uncertainty about how to make decisions in the next few weeks.

On the Y-axis at the top is “Change initiated by us”, and at the bottom is “Change initiated by others” (Yes, I know that looks as though it is the past tense, but just humour me). On the X-axis on the left is “Past orientation, focused on evidence and recent data” and on the right “Future orientation, focused on what is possible next … and next”.

Yes, again the immediate focus. My sense right now is to think shorter term just for a few days. Just get your team to start building a shared mental map. Then you can push further into the future.

Let us now think through these quadrants. Simply combine the statement on the Y-axis with the statement on the X-axis. You can start in any of the quadrants. I find it easier to start on the left in the past, combined with changes initiated by others. This is what we have to respond to.

Here is a write-up of a telephone conversation I had with a client today. It was surprisingly similar to a conversation I had yesterday with another client in the Not-for-Profit sector. You can skip this if you want to.

We started at the bottom left (which made sense to me because he felt that his hand was being forced, even though he understood that based on the evidence the government was probably making the right decisions). We spoke about the self-isolation of his team, the rapidly worsening statistics, and what it would mean for his organisation if the government (and others he depends on) made the obvious decisions. We explored which data was reliable and valuable enough to track.  Next, we moved to the top-left quadrant. Based on the data and evidence, what decisions should he be making? He immediately realised there were some pretty obvious decisions that he simply had to announce. We also reflected on what he had already done and explored how he knew that he had made the right decisions. 

Then we moved to the bottom right quadrant. We started to consider what changes might be made by others next. And next. He realised that we might move to complete quarantine if the government felt it was necessary. He realised that he would be forced to close large parts of his business, so he could explore with his team what they would need to keep some operations viable. He realised that if his suppliers closed, he would be in trouble, so he had to remain in close contact with them to know what their plans were for the next few days.

In the top-right quadrant, he realised that he had to consider a “dry run” to practice with his team to work together even when they were not together. Some other ideas were also explored. At this point, he could take it further. He had enough ideas to work with. I still wanted to explore the “what next” after the “ what next”, but he said we could talk about that the next day.

These are some notes of a long conversation that I had with a client. At the end of the conversation he could already sense that he could move from being responsive to being pro-active, and how he could involve his team in this exploration.

Please let me know how you are working with your team to build and maintain a shared mental map of your situation and your options. Do not be shy, use the comments block below!

Thanks to Harald Jarche, who is always reminding his readers rather to share half-baked ideas than to try and perfect them. All the errors are my fault, not his.

Much of innovation is mundane

I love facilitating thinking and reflection session with teams. However, there is one kind of request that I often decline, and that is a request to facilitate an annual innovation strategy rethink. I get many such requests towards the end of the year as organisations start thinking of the coming year and their “agenda” for innovation.

I don’t believe that it is possible to have a meaningful strategy meeting of minds that lasts one or two days, while the rest of the year everyone is busy scurrying about in their own trenches chasing deadlines, feeling squeezed and under pressure. You cannot make up for all the miscommunication, lack of communication and poorly moderated meetings just by calling everyone together for a day or two. Innovation is what happens on normal days, not in an extraordinary workshop.

I understand that people want creative innovation meetings and workshops. I love facilitating those. They feel their team deserve something that is fun, creative and mind blowing. That’s how more meetings should be in any case. Yet in my experience, a large part of innovation is rather mundane. In great organisations mundane innovations are carried out daily by people who are equipped and encouraged to reflect, dig deeper, re-think and make adjustments to issues that they feel matter in their work, even if their improvements or changes do not lead to new products, revenue streams or new markets.

I can think of at least two variations of mundane innovations.

The first variation consists of innovations in areas that appear to be mundane. These innovations are small changes in areas where we are so used to cumbersome processes or sub-optimal arrangements that we no longer even notice them. Important improvements can be made simply by tackling mind-numbingly dull areas in administration, bureaucracy, documentation or client interfaces. Finding ways to make backroom operations work better in support of frontline staff can free resources and mental bandwidth. Figuring out how something can be redesigned or reconceptualised with the benefit of hindsight can improve things going forward, even this cannot be quantified directly in profits or savings.

The second variation relates to innovations where the process itself feels mundane. This is where people have to sweat the details and stick with it until the task is done. Measure, adapt, retry, go back to the start. Repeat. Or spend time arguing or fleshing out two or three possible alternatives to enable better decision making, even if it feels like there are no real alternatives.

How leadership deals with the mundane everyday tasks of innovation is ultimately what makes one organisation healthier than another. Allocating resources to address the boring details outsiders don’t even see is often what makes organisations resilient and able to continuously adapt. It is the ability to set aside time, space and resources to enable people to dive deep into details, problems or ideas. In organisations that are able to continuously pay attention to the details it is much easier for more ambitious product, process or business model innovations to be implemented, as people throughout the organisation understand the discipline and process of innovation because they are encouraged to innovate often.

How are those seemingly mundane innovations enabled or encouraged?

  • Management must make some tools available, such as whiteboards, flipcharts, good coffee and snacks, spreadsheets and marker pens. Perhaps software and a facilitator could also be provided.
  • Management must create space. It may even be necessary to hold meetings without agendas and chairpersons, do explorations without reports or experiments without written documentation, or maybe a period with no electronic communications could be created so that people can dive deep into topics without having to manage or be managed. I cannot facilitate problem solving, sense making or innovation meetings in a boardroom consisting of a table and four walls. Perhaps spaces with glass walls, comfortable chairs and furniture that can be re-arranged would be more suitable.
  • Management must acknowledge, encourage and celebrate small improvements. If the intent of the organisational unit is clear, and the relationship to other functions in the organisation is understood, then people will be able to figure out where to optimise, where to re-think and where to let go. People should be encouraged to work together in small groups on topics, issues, opportunities or problems that draw their attention or that seem important in their context. Opportunities for organisations to make small changes behind the scenes are like antibodies attacking an invader in an organism.

Much of innovation seems mundane because we so often associate innovation with breakthrough products, smoothly integrated systems and creative teams that seem to require no management or direction. But all of these are made possible by allowing people to get on with attending to the details, to sink their teeth into things that matter, which might appear senseless to management.

Four functions of innovation and technology management

This article is meant for my business clients and colleagues managing technology transfer and innovation extension services.

In the past I have written much about the professionals and organisations who are responsible for helping entrepreneurs to improve and strengthen their innovation portfolios on my personal blog site.

To recapitulate: I believe that many industries are struggling to modernise because their supporting institutions use completely different frameworks to manage innovation (or perhaps the supporting institutions make their choices as randomly as enterprises do).

One of the first concepts that a tech transfer institute or industry support organisation should transfer to enterprises is “how to manage innovation and technology”. Just because there is an engineer or an MBA/PhD in a company does not guarantee effective or creative management of innovation and technology.

Today I shall focus on the four broad functions that must be managed strategically in every enterprise and supporting institution. Even if someone in the organisation has the job title of Innovation Manager or Technology Manager, these functions should still be visible throughout the organisation. In other words, this is not somebody’s job, but it helps if somebody coordinates these activities. Also, see these four functions as the minimum. More mature innovating organisations will have far more depth than these four high level headings.

The four functions agreed by most scholars and innovation experts can be summarised roughly as:

  1. Searching and scanning for new ideas and technologies, both within and beyond the organisation. This includes looking at technologies that could affect the clients of the organisation, and technologies that could disrupt markets and industries.
  2. Comparing, selecting and imagining how different technologies could impact the organisation, its markets and its own innovation agenda.
  3. Next comes integrating or deploying the technology or innovation into the organisation. This includes adjusting processes and systems, scaling up implementation, and project managing the whole change process.
  4. The last step is often overlooked, but new technology and innovation often make new ideas, innovations and improvements possible. I call this last step exploiting the benefits of a new technology or idea. This could involve leveraging some of the additional benefits or features of a technology, perhaps by creating a new business unit focused on an adjacent market or particular offering.

When I visit institutions, organisations and companies, I always ask “who is thinking about change taking place beyond your industry or key technology?”. I cannot tell you how often I hear that “the CEO” or “the production manager” are on top of new developments and will be attending a tech fair next year. How can this huge responsibility fall on the shoulders of one or two people, who are at the same time biased towards the current strategy which favours justifying past (sunk) investments? Or if you ask “How did you choose between two technologies?”  you will be surprised how little time was spent considering new business opportunities, or how few companies asked for on-site demonstrations or samples from their preferred technology providers.

I will refrain from being too critical of technology transfer institutions and industry-supporting organisations, except to say that these organisations should be a prime example to industry of how to scan, evaluate, compare and integrate new ideas and technologies. We don’t just want to see the shiny machines and neat facilities, we want to understand how you arrived at your decisions, and how you made the best of your investments after implementing the change. Furthermore, industry wants to know what’s next, or what’s beyond their vision and how it may affect their industry.

To bring it all together, the technological upgrading of industries is plagued by many different market failures. These failures include the tendency NOT to invest due to high research costs, due to fears about making the wrong choices, or because so many decisions and changes must be made at the same time – this while the business continues, markets fluctuate, and technologies change faster and faster. Companies (and institutions) cannot afford just to kick start innovation management immediately before making a change (or when forced by external forces to make a decision). These functions must be managed strategically on a continuous basis, both at the level of top management and within the different functions of the organisation. Both companies and their supporting institutions need to manage innovation and technology, not only from an operational perspective (striving for continuous improvement, etc.) but also from a strategic point of view.

The importance of the middle management layer for innovation

I love reading material and listening to podcasts about innovation and organisational change. One thing that strikes me is that a lot of the material focuses on the role of the leadership at the top of the organisation. This is at odds with my daily experience of working in small and medium-sized organisations.

In most of the places where I work, the challenge is often that there is a thin or non-existing layer of lieutenants that can coordinate and implement the ideas originating from higher up. Over many years of working in the manufacturing sector in South Africa I have often been struck by how “smart” top management can be, but then how wide the gap is between top management and the workers facing clients or working on the factory floor.

Recently, while reading the November-December 2017 issue of the Harvard Business Review, I found this quote from a March-April 1972 HBR article. It is from an article by Hugo Uyterhoeven.

This quote is exactly why I think we don’t always have to start with innovation right at the top, although top leadership that supports broad innovation certainly helps. Sometimes a motivated middle manager could be a great starting point for an improving innovation. Taking ideas from the top or using feedback from below or outside of the organisation, could be as good a starting point as the vision of a great senior leader.

The middle management level is also where coordinators of innovation or change can benefit from instruments developed in the field of complexity thinking or naturalistic decision making, like the instruments developed by Dave Snowden or Gary Klein or many others. Decisions at this level are often made with limited resources, incomplete information, competing objectives, tight time lines as well as shifting patterns. As the quote from Uyterhoeven suggests, these decisions often have both strategic and operational value. From an innovation perspective it means that the focus should not only be on developing good products or improving services, but also on innovation regarding how decisions are made, conversations are held, opinions of team members are elicited and considered, and how teams within organisations reach out to other silos or even organisations. Moreover, knowledge is created and recognised for its practical value by middle managers.

I believe that every middle manager can play a critical role in enabling an enabling an innovative culture.

One last thought related to this topic: while many companies have several reliable middle managers, they often don’t have succession plans in place for this level. There isn’t a pipeline of talent being refined in the organisation. Losing a great middle manager can have a great impact in small and medium-sized organisations. I have seen many small companies stumble because they don’t pay attention to the depth of their middle management

Innovation strategy metaphors: building bridges or strengthening bases

I have been inspired by some of the metaphors developed by Sonja Blignaut in her blog. She uses these metaphors to help leaders understand polarities, balance and strategic fit.

I therefore thought that I should write up two metaphors that I often use when helping leaders to decide where to focus their strategic innovation attempts. When leaders have to decide on what to focus their attention, they can either strengthen their base, which is focusing on where they can improve what already exists, or they can build bridges, which is focusing on the future, exploring beyond the horizon.

Let me explain these two metaphors.

Strengthening bases. From an innovation perspective, strengthening the base is all about using current resources, infrastructure and people in a more optimal way. This process need not only be inwardly focused, but could also apply to improving interaction with suppliers and relationships with clients, or improving access to existing markets. In the base-strengthening mode there is a strong focus on getting the basics right, on becoming more efficient, and on measuring progress and performance. In a base-strengthening strategy there will be a lot of efforts aimed at improving current products and services as well as  processes and internal systems.

Building bridges. From an innovation perspective, building bridges is about reaching out into adjacent or new territories. These territories could be either technological innovations or markets or even new business models. While the direction may be clear, the exact approach may not be immediately clear. A few pioneers, typically with a broader skill set, are sent to scout for possible beachheads or footholds and then help the organisation to establish anchor points across uncertain territory. The mindset of management is flexible, targets are negotiable, and performance is measured more in terms of potential than actual performance. In a bridge-building strategy there will be a lot of attempts to try new ideas, to experiment with new marketing methods, technology and even partnerships, both in terms of product/service and process/system innovation and business model arrangements and management systems.

After explaining these two different mind sets I like to ask leadership teams according to which metaphor they are operating You won’t believe how often teams cannot agree on whether they are building bridges or strengthening bases. This usually leads to an interesting discussion. Ultimately it is not about choosing one or the other, but the organisation must be clear about which area it is focusing on: base strengthening or bridge building.

I don’t want to overdo the metaphors, but I’d like to make one last point. These two metaphors require different mindsets and skills. Base strengthening is more operational, can be more accurately managed and measured, and deals with a lot of knowns. It is complicated, but it can be planned, results can be compared, and adaptations can be made to try and improve results. Bridge building on the other hand is riskier – it is less operational and more exploratory. There are lots of new challenges, new learning and unexpected requirements that could delay progress. It would be unwise to focus on bridge building when there are dangerous cracks in the foundations.

When leadership teams discuss their current strategy they quickly realise that while they are striving to build bridges they are in fact mainly busy strengthening the bases. Employees feel frustrated when their leaders are mainly talking about bridges to new opportunities when it is clear that there are many basics that are not receiving attention that are required for a strong base require. Think of the broken window theory and how quickly we become conditioned or used to things that are out of shape or incomplete -we just aren’t aware of what’s happening. Furthermore, strengthening the base could also consume so much of their resources that organisations can lose touch with the real world beyond the organisation. Leaders have to find ways of balancing attempts to reach into the unknown with attending to the basics that makes a base a stable, reliable platform from where the organisation can build its portfolio of strategies.

Instigating innovation inside organisations and networks

For the last four years I have been working on this idea of catalysing or instigating innovation (take a look at my “thinking out loud blog“). It is about what leaders at different points in organisations or networks can do to improve their systems, products, environments and structures.

Central to innovation is the generation, recognition and exploration of knowledge. This knowledge can be trapped in the minds of individual staff, customers, suppliers or users, or it can be explicit. It can be latent, or it can be in your face but not used.

Another central pillar to innovation is dialogue. By this I mean not just a conversation, nor do I mean communication systems. I mean an ongoing and ever expanding process of change through dialogue – the exchange of ideas, the exploration of concepts, the identification of mental maps, attractors and emergent properties, the breaking down of aggregates and boundaries and the construction of new concepts. Dialogue spans many levels, it functions throughout the organisation and even spills over the boundaries of the organisation into other organisations, cultures, systems and networks.

By combining our research in Mesopartner on complexity and evolutionary thinking, and our experience and practice in promoting innovation within and between organisations, I came up with four frames to instigate innovation.

I describe the four frames in more detail below the diagram. In the diagram the activities are on the left hand side, and the documented strategies and how they are connected are on the right side. You have the read this diagram from the bottom up.

The Instigating Innovation Framework

The first frame is about the interaction between the strategy of the organisation, the business, the unit or the team and the innovation strategy. Many organisations have a business strategy and then a separate innovation strategy. Or they have only a business plan used mainly for financial reasons, and do not spend sufficient time tracking technological change, market change and new paradigms. Ideally the business strategy and the innovation strategy should be tightly interwoven, with the one strongly shaping the other. The more your team innovates in products, processes and business structures, the more innovative your business strategy will be.

The second frame is about how the organisation recognises, generates and leverages knowledge. This is about creating new organisational and personal habits about generating, testing, combining and stretching the use of knowledge. It enables organisations to become more thoughtful, more intentional about learning, exploring and the leveraging of knowledge to become far more innovative. In this this frame the organisation activates its resources and systems to become more knowledge intensive. The result of this frame is a knowledge, dialogue and learning strategy that feeds into the innovation strategy outlined under the first frame.

The third frame is about developing a portfolio of improvement activities that spans different time horizons, technologies, markets and functions. Many companies already have improvement activities, but because the first two frames are not in place, these projects are often isolated, project driven and to some extent even disruptive. Every opportunity to change something small, to replace something, to move something or to install something should be an opportunity to strengthen the cultural traits that are healthy, and to dampen the organisational habits that are not supporting the business strategy. From this frame we develop operational and functional or unit-level strategies that operationalise and feed back into the two earlier strategies.

The fourth frame is about networks that connects the inside of the organisation with broader knowledge, technology and societal networks. It is about developing and strengthening the knowledge networks and flows within the organisation and to external organisations. Here the organisation intentionally builds the technological capability of external knowledge partners. It is from here that the organisation can support research and development and longer-term scientific thinking. Here the organisation also purposefully engage in trans and multidisciplinary research, where the thinking and knowledge base of the organisation gets stretched. From this frame we develop a network and research strategy that feeds into the earlier strategies.

Over the years I have assisted many organisations to embark on this journey. I have seen at first hand how organisations and teams that have purposefully improved the way they talk to each other have shifted from being followers to becoming innovative leaders. I have seen the power of simple frameworks that allow deep reflection on perspectives, a continuous process of a calibration of ideas that are mixed, re-mixed and tried. I have also seen how managers at all levels and individuals grow in confidence as they feel more acknowledged, valued and fulfilled.

I hope you will take your team on this journey!

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