What would a company do if they wanted an ineffective transformation and innovation effort?

The Saying "Hope for the best, plan for the worst " can be traced back to the Stoics. Seneca and friends practiced what is called in Latin -- “the premeditation of evils” — In essence, they were trying to anticipate what to avoid and if they encountered it what would they do in response. Inversion thinking is a similar discipline and powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on what you don't want! It asks, "What if I focused on a different side of this situation?" Instead of asking how to do something, we ask how to not do it.

In recently studying Inversion Thinking as an effective innovation approach, it caused me to think about its applicability transformation and innovation. One could argue that this approach might seem pessimistic. It is by design! It reminds me of DeBono's Six Thinking Hats black hat! However, don't confuse pessimism with being a naysayer or bad teammate. Inversion thinking removes emotion from the reasoning process and it severely limits the HIPPO syndrome. It also helps us avoid blinded optimism, which often costs companies brutal financial losses and loss of jobs for very good people. Think of inversion as a forcing function for the elimination of preconceived notions.

In BCG's recent report on the state of innovation, they wrote attributes of a successful innovation program. So, in using Charlie Munger's saying, "Tell me where I’m going to die, that is, so I don’t go there.” I want to invert the suggestions i wrote here https://shorturl.at/VQNw2 about transformation and innovation by asking, "What would some attributes be of an ineffective transformation and innovation effort"? Let me offer a few:

1. Don't have a documented innovation process with language, tools and methods that can be well understood by anyone.
2. Your leaders and others don't have a shared expectation of innovation or a shared definition of business model, etc.
3. Your innovation team lacks an internal focus.
4. The organization doesn't have clarity on funding for innovation work.
5. The organization doesn’t clearly articulate its expectations /success measures for innovation.?
6. Your innovation effort doesn't have a methodical process and platform that can enable the engagement of every single employee at scale. I call this Reinvestment Innovation.
7. Your innovation effort is driven by ideas vs a relentless pursuit of a clearly defined problem in context within a business model.
8. Your internal operators don't know what the innovation team truly does. In other words, they see the innovation team as a tax vs a 401k. Your operators also don't have a consistent answer to "what is your role in innovation and what are you suppose to do and how?"
9. Your internal operators lack a methodical system to manage their business model portfolio and a framework for how o renovate, create, or eliminate business models and processes without the innovation team's involvement.
10. Your c-suite doesn't have a standing agenda item on transformation and innovation.
11. Your organization doesn't harness theory to better understand the progress consumers are trying to make.
12. Your innovation effort rewards emotional energy and excitement toward innovation more than it rewards a rigorous scientific method approach to document assumptions, run experiments, etc. to de-risk any and all efforts underway. Innovation for reputation vs impact.
13. Your organization doesn't have a psychologically safe system/approach to value those who candidly speak up about what is broken, what they need, and what could be done about it; those people get accused of not supporting a key leader's vision and are tagged as not being "team players".
14. Leaders seek to be validated more than having a focus on validating or invalidating assumptions that anyone may hold.
15. Your organization doesn't have a methodical business model portfolio management process and measures nor a process for renovating, creating, or eliminating business models.

It occurs to me that an inversion thinking innovation measurement assessment could be created in addition to a transformation readiness assessment. And if, like mentioned earlier, you see this as a pessimistic article, that may show the value in doing an exercise like this regarding your transformation and innovation program. The intent of this is to help the companies in the 97% group move their innovation and transformation program to something that will be more effective and that they will be happy with. If you want to know more about how to build an effective transformation and innovation effort, please reach out. Best, Todd