The Innovation Paradox

At existing companies ideas are often the easy part

This post will not be for the faint of heart. It is for those leaders that need to change others or those who are very willing to have their views challenged. Seriously though I am writing this to try to knock people out of the status quo. Fair warning.

Is it the idea or the people?

Trying to change an entrenched culture is very difficult. Once a company has been around for many years and gone through many cycles of hiring you have a consistent culture and usually a few pretty prominent personality types. By virtue of the challenges of change management and the fact that getting different results means approaching things differently, you can start to see where the challenges kick in.

Fast forward to today’s world of disruption, new competitors and “rules” being broken all over the place. What you thought you knew, if you are being honest, isn’t looking so clear anymore. We often dismiss “new” realities as temporary aberrations. If you look back at structural changes, ones where new capabilities are creating fundamentally different patterns in how things are approached and the results those approaches create, you can see that these are fundamental shifts not bumps that will go away.

Innovation is both an idea and a change management problem. The two are intertwined. The hard part in an existing organization is that you are going to need to “help people help themselves” when they are resistant to change. It is amazing how fast the “cultural antibodies” deploy to protect the status quo. What constitutes success, how people are rewarded and who gets that next opportunity are major drivers of your culture. The reality of how each of those decisions are made will determine whether the status quo is maintained (even if the people change) or if you have the right framework to ensure people are behind a new direction from the get go.

Where you are headed is the sum of each individual decision along the way.

This is the advantage a new organization has. It starts fresh and minimizes the change management problem, trading it for the setup problem. If you are setting up something new anyways (which you are in Innovation activities) this trade-off starts to look quite attractive. Today we know a lot more about what’s different between managing a startup versus an established business. So why choose one over the other? It depends on where you are starting from and your goals.

Adapting and creating new ways to create and deliver value is key in today’s marketplace. There are many new, readily available capabilities today that can be used to outmode existing business models. I won’t go into this too much here. I have written a few articles on Innovation already here, hereand here to provide a few links. Even a few specific ones on processes to help with that like Design Sprints (by Google). With this article I am trying to shake the foundations of the status quo a little bit and help build an acknowledgement of the inherent problems with a change resistant culture.

The Innovation Paradox is being able to change our behavior to adopt a new reality. Maintaining the status quo and staying in our comfort zone stops real Innovation in its tracks. People or ideas…you can start to see the common theme that is this paradox.

That’s not me

Are you sure? You should definitely carefully review this section.

We all want to be successful. The issue is we are predisposed to what we know and our own ideas.

Do you find yourself saying or thinking…

• Is “we can’t do that” a common reason different ideas are not pursued?
• When ideas are shared do they often lack objective presentation of cons and risks?
• Are people selling rather than demonstrating ideas?
• When you give feedback on someone else’s idea are you focused on issues and why it won’t work?
• Are your worried about who’s going to call you if you change things?
• Are your worried about that next conversation you have to have more than the idea?
• Do you find yourself debating from one perspective, this won’t work for the customer, this won’t work for the employee, …?
• Does the loudest or most vocal in the room often dominate conversations?
• Do you often default to what feels right?
• Does brainstorming feel more like a competition?

If you answered yes to any of these then there are opportunities to address if you truly want to get different results.

What can I do

There is a need for a high degree of self awareness to be successful at Innovation (or startups). Getting different results requires doing things differently. This may seem obvious and perhaps even flippant… We are all creatures of habit though, it’s how we’re wired. This means we default to repeating what we’ve always done. You have to consciously break out of that historical mold.

Learn to default towards, rather that away from, new and different, ideas and people.

Engage an outsider to help. This person doesn’t have to be from outside your company but look for someone who thinks differently and has solid facilitation skills. Research and read, cross reference many different outside sources to reduce bias and to get to what actually works best, objectively.

The path to getting different outcomes is changing how you work to get there. So many think it’s having better ideas but that leaves too much to random chance. Change how you work to improve your results in the long term

Check your ego at the door

Be conscious at all times of the difference between your opinion and fact. Especially arguing from only one perspective and cherry picking your facts rather than sharing all the facts. It’s okay to run on opinion but be clear with yourself and others that it is an opinion, acknowledging that you’re making a bet. Find ways to research and test to determine what actually works. Always be open minded and never fall in love with an idea. This is a huge risk because it creates blind spots and inflexibility.

Innovators think like investors

Identify your bets, explore options and always adapt. A simple way to do this is to start practicing by writing everything down. Getting it out of your head is step one. If this feels daunting that’s a sure sign that you need to do it. Until you can be clear in writing the idea isn’t well understood.

This doesn’t have to be overly complicated, try something like the business model canvas or mission model canvas.

Create an assumption board. Start tracking the things that need to be true to make the idea work. Revisit the board at least weekly. You’ll get better at identifying your assumptions through practice. Don’t assume you have them all the first time around.

Spend your energy, time and resources in small chunks. Find ways to test and assess on an ongoing basis and invest more where results and opportunity warrant it.

If you need a place to start

Start with, what would the opposite of everything I do today look like. I know that probably sounds extreme but the point is to get you thinking differently. Once you have the opposite laid out you can work towards something less extreme or perhaps something entirely different altogether. Be confident in your process for determining the thing to do next, don’t focus on the output. The world changes and over focus on what’s been done and a single idea leads to outdated business practices and business models.

Get comfortable prototyping

It’s natural to feel like you need the whole thing to give feedback. This is very expensive though. Start practicing with modern paper and interactive prototyping techniques alongside customer validation techniques to figure out what to build BEFORE building it.

Build creative confidence

Do this by allowing tests rather than opinion to filter ideas. Be careful of forceful or dominating personalities. Everyone has unique strengths but some traits can cause harm in creative situations. Find ways to make sure everyone is heard and ideas are not cut off too early through processes like Design Sprints. Rally people around a mission rooted in the results to be created, empower them to determine what the ideas are to create those results. This will bring purpose and ownership which will drastically increase your outcomes, develop your talent and attract high performers. Most of all don’t try to change everyone at once.

These techniques help you get around the Innovation Paradox.

Key takeaways

1. Get a third party to help you?—?fresh minds can add a lot
2. Focus on how you work not what you work on
3. Get in the mindset of never assuming you know but always testing and adapting
4. Build your creative confidence and that those around you
5. Find inexpensive ways to prototype and test BEFORE you build

Most of all, remember to always ask “how might we?” with everything in life.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” -Henry Ford

Originally posted here on Medium.