Innovation – when standing still is going backwards

With the slamming of the transfer window occurring yesterday evening, and having witnessed Manchester United’s apparent mad scramble for players in the last few days, I have been unable to escape the lingering thoughts in my mind relating to innovation. How when you are at the pinnacle of something can you embrace change ensuring you remain at the forefront of industry you operate within?

Manchester United is an institution which stands out in the minds of my generation as a beacon of success. Almost universally for the last twenty years they have experienced nothing but accomplishment and everything they have done has been tinged with victory. Just now though they are a metaphor for the disarray that can occur when change in management is forced upon you and you lose the effective leadership and direction that ensures continued progress and success. They were defined by their manager, but equally he could be classified as their CEO, and they have been unable to recover. They have fallen behind their main rivals in every meaningful KPI (key performance indicator) relating to the success of their enterprise and are struggling to keep up. What follows are a number of areas which help nurture development and facilitate innovation.

Development of talent

Development of talent is an essential element ensuring continued success. Be it in a sporting setting, a business setting or any other walk of life establishing a conveyor belt of talent is an essential necessity in ensuring long term achievement. This starts with education, leads to mentorship and continues with continued professional development throughout the lifecycle of your personnel’s employment within the business. Ultimately leaders are responsible for developing the talent in their organisations. What’s needed then is a deep-rooted conviction that people are what really matter – that leaders must develop the capabilities of employees, nurture their careers, and manage the performance of individuals and teams. The reasons this often fails are due to a set of interrelated issues, including but not limited to:

1. Time. It’s scarce, and urgent tasks have a tendency to consume it. Leaders who aren’t disciplined in expenditure of their time fall into the modern trap of short-termism and can only appreciate instantaneous results. This fails to address the plan that is required as part of a long-term investment in people.
2. Focus on visible skills. As leaders rise to more senior positions, it’s natural to feel like they need to demonstrate strategic thinking, strong business acumen, and effective P&L management — noticeable skills that catch people’s attention. Building talent, on the other hand, is less obvious and has a long-term payoff but cannot be appreciated immediately, nor may they be the direct beneficiary of the results.
3. Lack of development culture. One-on-one coaching can be intrinsically fulfilling and, for that reason alone, leaders are more likely to set aside time for it. But senior executives make the biggest impact when they distinguish between individual coaching and organizational coaching. It’s the latter that lacks most. Call it the culture, or environment, of development that’s missing.

 Procurement of talent from outwith the organisation

Of course it’s not always sufficient to only establish a plan for developing talent within and hope this succeeds in nourishing the requirements of the business holistically long term. A coherent strategy for the acquirement of talent from out with the organisation must also be addressed. By taking account of both routes the future of the company can be ensured in addition to fostering innovation. Introduction of new ideas and thoughts can in fact be transformational injecting new attitudes within the organisation which could be missing should a culture of internal progress be the only thing that is inherent within the development strategy. Innovation depends on the ability to continually re-assess the fundamental offerings of the business or team by leadership and embracing change. By understanding the likelihood for trends to change over time and being open to the opportunity embraces innovation as a vehicle for progress. This mind-set must begin at the top of the organisation and permeate every level. And most importantly, it includes the intangibles of culture: the beliefs, expectations, and sense of purpose of those in the organization. Creative thinking and collaboration can be encouraged and rewarded, or in many formal and subtle ways discouraged. It’s the leader’s job to get it right.

Negotiation

The ability to negotiate is the skill most regularly discounted as an essential aspect of innovation. The inability to negotiate efficiently may not be as intrinsically related to the innovative culture of a company but in my experience it can put a stop to progress before the company has the chance to move. Whether it relates to the negotiation of costs in the supply chain or the offering of salary to a potential personnel negotiation permeates every level of the organisation and can either ensure or hinder innovation. Using Manchester United as an example again, their inability to negotiate successfully with other teams over the acquisition of talent has eradicated the innovative progress they have strived for throughout their history. What is startling is how quickly this can occur. Losing key staff has a far deeper impact than the immediacy of the hole they leave. The skills gap they depart with, if not replaced, is hugely problematic.

Succession management

Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing internal people with the potential to fill key leadership positions in the company. Succession planning increases the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. Taken narrowly, "replacement planning" for key roles is the heart of succession planning. (Charan, Drotter, Noel, 2001).

Succession planning is a process whereby an organisation ensures that employees are recruited and developed to fill each key role within the company. Through your succession planning process, you recruit superior employees, develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities, and prepare them for advancement or promotion into ever more challenging roles. Actively pursuing succession planning ensures that employees are constantly developed to fill each needed role. As your organization expands, loses key employees, provides promotional opportunities, and increases sales, your succession planning guarantees that you have employees on hand ready and waiting to fill new roles. This infused with all of the above is a key indicator of ensuring innovation.

Conclusively there is no recipe for innovation or any assurances of continued success. What is required is a mindfulness of all the interrelated competencies that drive the process and an understanding of the pitfalls that can inhibit advancement. Ultimately standing still isn’t always going backwards so long as a plan exists for the development/procurement of talent alongside a competent team of negotiators and a defined plan for succession and development. No single element will ensure innovation or advancement but a lack of direction will almost always sentence the endeavour to delay or worse failure, just look at United post Fergie…