Top 5 Mistakes Corporate Tech Innovation Efforts Make And What To Do Instead
We Have a Problem
Tech and business leaders, we have a problem. We’ve had a problem for at least three decades, and it’s becoming frankly tiresome.
Our technical projects continue to fail at an alarming rate. They are expensive, over budget, and deliver under scope.
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What Is Clearly Not Working
Blaming isn’t fixing it.
More funding isn’t fixing it.
Cloud and AI aren’t fixing it.
More outsourcing isn’t fixing it.
And pretending certainly isn’t fixing it.
Sorry to burst everyone’s bubble, but we frankly deserve better and can be operating at a higher level instead of settling for this anymore. I know, this is uncomfortable and I’m guilty of what I’m writing about here. At times, I’ve pretended things were okay so as not to be “disruptive” in corporate America. I get it, it’s dangerous to speak out on this. However, it’s now even more dangerous not to speak out!
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Here are 4 quick stats, if you at all doubt that we still have an issue here:
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Imagine, for a moment, if 70% of your water was contaminated, or your energy bill was suddenly 4x or your trash wasn’t picked up 2 out of 3 times. That would be unacceptable, right?
And yes, while technology innovation is somewhat new as a practice, we can absolutely expect more—much more!
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The Five Most Common Mistakes
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Mistake 1: Building an Intake and Forming a Committee
All too often, the first thing a corporate tech team does for a new initiative is to build an intake and form a new committee of “stakeholders”. Every new idea has to go through some gauntlet to get approved, get resources and have a committee discussion. This makes things that could be done in days take weeks or months, or not get funded at all. It becomes about talking about the thing vs. doing it. Stop it.
Instead: Create a few part-time special forces teams of 3-5 people. These are a mix of tech, business, and maybe (gasp) even a customer. About 10% of their week (they are part-time on this) will be assigned to innovations and experiments to move the company forward. Remove their status reports and admin overhead. Trust me, they have time if you do that. And, be careful with what I call the “watcher to do-er” ratio. If the watchers outnumber the do-ers, remove watchers.
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Mistake 2: Getting High-Centered on Artifacts
Not all processes are bad, to be clear. Having repeatability and predictability (and all the abilities) is important, to be sure. And, these can take on a life of their own, like the dreaded TPS report in Office Space. If you are starting off a new initiative and asking for a battery of documents, checklists and such to be completed, stop doing this—especially in the early days.
Instead: For a new initiative, have the team quickly sketch a few diagrams. These can include a customer journey (keep it simple), a tech architecture (also simple) and major milestones for the next few weeks (yes, simple). This gives them enough agreement to act without squishing the innovation. After their experiments, they can fill out forms for the big thing later.
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Mistake 3: Not Considering the Risk of NOT Doing It
Ah, risk. Big corporations love to have many groups dedicated to risk. Some of them truly are critical with protecting against big privacy and security risks. However, risk aversion can take a life of its own and play up our already risk-averse RAS in our brains. Additional risk phase gates and committees can create entire documents of why not to act, try or experiment at all. The organization can make the mistake of only prioritizing “least” risky option as always being the best path. Doh.
Instead: Consider the risk of not doing the thing. Are you going to put yourself behind your peers? Are your customers demanding this? Could you even just learn something from doing it? Will it keep employees engaged? If you need to, create an equal score and anti-risk committee for the “risk of not doing” something. Put an NPV, ROI and IRR (and any other acronym) for that as well.
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Mistake 4: Keeping Your Hands Clean
It’s “fun” to talk about things and admire problems. Oh look, a problem. How fun. Let’s talk about it some more. Gees, that’s bad. Let’s now talk about all the reasons we can’t do anything—costs, mandates, lack of resources, too hard, blah, blah, blah. Poor us. We’re helpless. Yes, we can make the problem more huge and seem even less obtainable to resolve, and give up on trying. Although, notice we don’t give up on complaining and talking about it. Don’t make that a core competency if you want to progress.
Instead: Get messy. Create an environment where a few small groups are experimenting with ways to fix situations. Use non-standard tools and techniques to get there, maybe including mash-ups. Prioritize progress over perfection. Know that it might not meet all your tech and corporate standards on day one. That’s okay at this stage. Those standards might be limiting you.
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Mistake 5: Forgetting the Customer
Hopefully everything you are doing has a benefit to a customer, which I’m defining as someone providing currency in exchange for a service. Yes, those customers. All too often, we can pretend we know what customers want, or use summary analytics that we think tells the customer story completely, and even assume and ignore the customer.
Instead: Engage and listen to customers. Find a way to show them things in progress, even halfway and messy, and get their opinion early. Ask their ideas for solutions they want to see and frustrations they have. Let the engineers and other do-ers listen to this. If possible, let them also hear phone recordings about the most upset customers every week. Let the customer be a decision maker. Let this greatly shape your ideation and solutioning.
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Bonus Mistake: Ignoring the Mavericks and Quiet Ones
(We are breaking the rules and the notion of five things here with a sixth one. I know, that’s more than five and you’ll be okay I promise!)
In corporate culture, the loudest ones in a meeting and extroverts usually “win”. Or, the ones considered “disruptive” are ignored along with the introverts. That can be a big mistake. The quiet ones may need a different way to express ideas and may have some big solutions brewing. The mavericks may be brave or upset enough to care and ready to take action, and not yet know how to productively express these ideas.
Instead: Create a channel (or channels) to take in ideas from those that might be quiet. Visual or hands-on tools can help here. Some of your ideation exercises can be done in silence. Encourage the mavericks to go from complaining and upset to active problem solving—and put their ideas in action. Allow them to lead some of these mini initiatives.
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Deep Breath… And First Steps
Okay, after considering this, I want to make sure that I understand chaos is scary and we all want to avoid that. No doubt. But, while we all want order and like to avoid chaos and risk, that’s not a path to progress and development. It’s going to be messy to get the result at times.
Let’s think about your first steps, or your kid’s first steps. Was there a committee? Did you have an intake process? Did you assess risk and decide to just continue crawling?
Or, even more poignant, after you learned to walk, did you have a 70% failure rate every time you attempted to walk? No, of course not, you had a 100% success rate (
okay, maybe not that one night you hit the sauce too hard).
When we were young, we experimented with walking. We fell a lot. We tried new ways to stand up. We watched others but always took action ourselves. And, once we got this, we were cruising around looking for other things to learn. While there was an order of events, it isn’t a scriptable process and it happens at different paces for all kids.
Your new tech efforts at a company are more like your first steps than some repeatable assembly-line or house-building analogy that you are using. Let them be a little sloppy, a little organic and give them a little space. You also don’t need a committee of watchers to help the new walkers either.
Just a few little tweaks in approach and mindset here can lead to much more innovation, team engagement, and frankly fun!
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And, if you need help, I’m here for you!
Elevating Executives Through Co-Creative Leadership
7 个月As we discussed last weekend, I think one of the big reasons for failure of transformations is the lack of focus on it. I've seen this over and over where people have a big transformation kickoff then do nothing. Six months later, they are shocked things are still the same. Best to have regular discussions on this transformation you want to do (even every week, 30m is more than enough) if you want to see it moving.