How do you evaluate innovation and change?

I disagree, you don’t have to have everything figured out to introduce innovation or evaluate it. It’s important to avoid rigidity and cast your innovation net too narrowly. Often times innovation can be borrowed from a completely different industry or business model.

Evaluating innovation and change requires a clear set of criteria aligned with your vision, mission, and strategy. I believe that both quantitative measures like financial performance and qualitative aspects like employee engagement are essential. Engaging stakeholders in defining these criteria ensures a holistic perspective and more accurate assessment.

It's important to remember that both innovation projects and change initiatives are in service of something. Ideally, this "something" is of strategic importance to the organisation—otherwise why are you considering them at all!

The social science is clear on this. In order to innovate, you have to track change. Innovation Sprints are designed to measure success over time, and are a great way to make sure you are always on the right track. This will really help you and your team stay motivated. The innovation process can be difficult. Having small goals creates small success. Tracking and monitoring your success is key to getting the job done. As an executive leader, it's your job to create these small goals and to CELEBRATE the wins.

Two critical things to consider. First, it is important to track both process and result measures. The former are in essence leading metrics for the latter. Second, it is vital to match the right metrics to the maturity level of the initiative being monitored. Do you really want to use the same measures for the $2B CAPEX investment as well as $20k innovation project that doesn't even have a prototype yet? The former is way more mature, and can benefit from a plethora of existing measures. Using the same on the latter would only stifle it. Focus on the few that matter instead.

Supporting open innovation in a company's culture is great. However, there are instances where its execution deviates from the initial plan. Evaluate from these instances if management provided the right context, proper guidelines, training, and oversight for what would make the most effective approach. Learning from and noticing where you are under-utilizing people’s ideas is a great start to understanding areas where people have had creative ideas and, with some guidelines and context, could come up with better ideas and ways to improve your business.

Here is a simple learning process you can institute with little effort: 1. Prior to running a project, initiative, or any action make sure to write down what are your desired outcomes. 2. Then write down what are your intended actions for achieving the above desired outcomes. Use words and full sentences. Supplement with illustration when warranted. Don't use slides. 3. Go and perform the above actions. 4. Write down what you actually did. 5. Write down what were the actual outcomes. Again, full sentences. 6. Get everyone in the room and discuss discrepancies. You will be surprised with what you notice! Capture all of this on few pages, and make it available to everyone in the organisation. Enjoy the learning.

From my perspective, evaluating innovation and change goes beyond mere metrics; it's about recognizing and celebrating achievements. I believe that acknowledging the contributions of team members and stakeholders not only boosts morale but also solidifies loyalty. Sharing successes with the wider industry, in my experience, positions an organization as a leader and strengthens its influence.

Everyone should be the part of the same journey, even if not everyone is working on the same projects and initiatives. Be wary of creating tribalistic culture that would result in internecine warfare.

Indeed, both change and innovation are continuous processes. When it comes to innovation, leaders' job is to provide clarity regarding organisation's desired destination, and directions on acceptable ways of getting there. By doing so, and trusting their employees, they create space for creativity and craftsmanship.

Real innovation is a social change. Sure, we can "force" development of new things (R&D) but that is rarely where true innovation comes from. True innovation is fostered by culture and usually happens on the perimeter/fringes of the organization. The organization job is to create a "highway" where those new ways of behaving/doing are then brought into the core business and integrated.

If you want innovation, you have to have an innovative culture. That allows us to think outside the box, takes time to discover and understand problems that customers may not even know they have and it allows for experimentation, meaning there will be failures and that is ok. Learn from that incorporate that in the process and keep going. Understand what makes innovation in your organization challenging and change that. If you are in the middle of a change towards an innovative culture, your first action items are: -Empower your employees and stay calm when there is failure. They are still learning. -Train them where and how to look for innovation -Recruit innovative people who have worked in such an environment and learn from them

for assessing innovation & change, both qualitative & quantitative measures need to be evaluated. > pre- and post-implementation surveys to gauge changes in employee sentiment, mindsets, and capabilities > clear metrics early aligned to goals – improve productivity by X%, reduce costs by Y% and track rigorously > look at utilization data or participation levels > interview focus groups to collect anecdotal evidence on how behaviors, processes, and outcomes have evolved > metrics to be linked to NPS ( net promoter score) > internal & external communications to be audited balancing quantifiable business gains with cultural and mindset shifts, you can holistically assess transformation success by capturing both the hard and soft data.

1 - Don’t “marry” products, ideas or innovation spaces. Always keep “dating”. 2 - if something will take too long to implement don’t do it. It won’t be innovative by the time you’re done.