How Stella saved the farm: A practical insight into Innovation

"How Stella saved the farm" is a short fascinating fable inspired by the George Orwell classic, ‘Animal Farm’ and John Kotter’s ‘Our Iceberg is melting’. It illustrates an impressive way of not just thinking about innovation, but also implementing it. In its simplicity, lies its sheer brilliance like the rarest of things and thus it cannot be equated with multitudes of books describing innovation frameworks, treatise and the like which are available. In today’s world, most organizations, big and small understand the relevance of this ten-letter word “Innovation”. If we think about any innovative idea we tried, and want to know exactly why it failed, the book can provide concrete answers beyond the reasons we have told ourselves and others when it did not work.

The fable is about a mare called Dierdre who inherits her father’s profitable animal farm and must find breakthrough new business idea to survive beyond the next few years. She is chosen to run the farm by her father over “The Bull” who learnt everything from her father and worked exactly as him. The Bull is naturally dissatisfied at not being chosen to run the farm. Stella is the bright, young sheep who travels the world and brings a new idea of running luxury wool (derived from Peruvian alpaca) business to the farm. Thus, begins the journey of implementing this idea with the help and expertise of all animals in the farm.

Here were my key takeaways from the book, which is about getting the basics right :-

1)     Need for Innovation: The first step in the process of implementing innovation is the realization and honest acceptance that you need it. It can also be an acknowledgement that “as-is” is not working well, and there is a sincere need for improvement. It sounds simple enough, but sometimes it takes a long time to realize and accept this fact.

2)     Process for getting a Breakthrough Idea: The second stage is obviously pitching for “Breakthrough” ideas from everyone. And what better way to get it than from your own employees, across all levels of the organization. Dierdre urges her farm to unleash creativity, does not define metrics for a successful idea beyond it being called a “breakthrough new business”. Teams come back with several (and indeed breakthrough!) options, right from opening a zoo, to opening a chain of restaurants specializing in eggs. The idea selected is the luxury wool business, as it is not only breakthrough, but also requires low investment.

3)     Communication to right channels at the right time: As they say, ‘Finding the right Idea is only the beginning’ in Innovation, so you allocate resources towards the new path and communicate the priorities to your teams. This is easier said than done, as your communication on changed priorities will often end up making teams confused on what roles they need to play or what has changed for them. This is to be articulated clearly and explained to everyone. Dierdre explains this to Bull whom she wants to keep managing the farm, while putting Mav, the horse in charge of new business. Bull further makes it crystal clear to animals down the chain that they need to continue focusing on running the existing farm business. However, as Mav sets about creating his team, there are changes from time to time in organization structure which creates confusion for teams. However, Dierdre ensures this is articulated and explained each time to everyone involved so that change is not brought at the cost of most animals losing motivation or thinking they are no longer needed if not involved in luxury wool business. Hence, ensuring everyone is closely tied to play their roles in the process of innovation. Though, all these animals seem remarkably gifted in talking clearly, in the human world this is often a challenge depending on the preferences and motivations of the humans involved, as well as the workplace environment in general. 

4)     Flexible Organization structure to facilitate new business: For trying anything new, it is important to realize that once you start, there will be many changes in the way. Hence, it becomes important that it is considered that organization structure is not set in stone once defined at start of innovation, and can change as you discover the bottlenecks in the implementation. Dierdre has Mav report to one of Bull’s associates earlier then directly to herself later to help him remove obstacles in the way of production, sales and marketing. She also makes a bold, first ever decision to not just hire alpacas for wool production, but also an alpaca named Andrea for a management position in Marketing when she realizes that her team knows little about luxury wool business. She knows that to succeed at something you have never done before, you need to deviate from norms and try things which have never been done. 

5)     Facing Reality of what customer wants: Sounds like the most obvious one, though it could be an acid test to know if you are producing what you can, or are you exactly producing what customer wants you to produce. Although Andrea from luxury wool marketing (the Alpaca) is not becoming a favorite at the new organization, she certainly knows the luxury wool business well to know what customers want as products and where they prefer to buy it. How she goes about making her team members and CEO understand it reveals her style that is apt for the role she needs to play. To make your innovative idea work, you would sometimes need to change your production and distribution strategy significantly and tread new grounds.

6)     Organization culture issues: These are bound to happen for an organization trying to embrace change. It would involve “letting go of control” for some team members and it is one of the most difficult tasks to do in the way of change to make an inclusive environment. This happens when other teams need to share resources with Mav. Dierdre leads by example on providing the right direction and creating the right environment, eventually leading everyone to overcome their resistance. For example, she ensures Mav gets what he needs to make new business a success without him being labelled a favorite, and other team members get their due credit for a job well done.

7)     Learning from Experiment & measuring the Innovation: Ultimately, Dierdre notices that customers love the idea, but it is still not profitable. She realizes that she needs to seek opinion of someone objective not involved in the new business. So, in comes the Rooster, who emphasizes the importance of running any innovation idea as an experiment and learning from the experiment by measuring key performance against set objectives vs look for profits right away. He also explains how Mav, the Innovation leader is first accountable to run a disciplined experiment, versus for profits. Hence, come up the new metrics for measuring Mav’s success such as defining a clear hypothesis, identifying most critical unknowns, while planning, analyzing results and deciphering the lessons learnt. It also includes his whole team clearly articulating the plan and assumptions in the exact same manner as he understands it.

So, when we work on launching a new idea, product or innovation and think through implementation, we can ask ourselves these questions more often during the innovation process to make it a success: -

Is our idea breakthrough? Are we making something that customer wants? Do we have the right team structure? Are we communicating enough and well? Are we learning from experiment? Are we measuring innovation in the right way?

Maybe what we encounter and assume to be a fault with the idea, is more the fault with our execution. The essence is to not get lost in every obstacle, and remember the big picture while analyzing right measures suited to nurture innovation.