10 Questions That Identify High Potential Leaders

Monday 12 March, 2012

by Profiles International

According to research, 40% of internal job moves made by people identified by their companies as "high potentials" end in failure. Many organisations make the mistake of looking simply at ability when assessing an employee for a management job. What questions can you ask about your high potential leaders that will help you make a more effective selection?

It is incredible how often high producing individuals get promoted into management jobs that require a totally different mindset to be successful. Think of the hot-shot sales rep or the genius software engineer.
The reason these people fail often comes down to three critical factors: leadership behaviours, aspiration and engagement.

1. Leadership behaviours looks at what behaviours the candidate displays that suit a leadership role
   
2. Aspiration entails whether the candidate really wants the position and is willing to make the sacrifices it may require
   
3. Engagement involves the employee's commitment to the company and its mission. In focusing on whether an employee can potentially do a job, many organisations neglect the question, "Does he want to do this?"

Defining the characteristics can be a tricky proposition, particularly with young employees. The characteristics people develop through training, experience and progress in their activity are not necessarily apparent from who they are when they start. Moreover, many managers have beliefs about leadership that look like something out of a movie - loud, aggressive, in-your-face type of guys.
Organisations should develop leadership competency models based on a set of traits and behaviours associated with success in the company and then measure employees on how well they do relative to those traits. Organisations need to be sure they are assessing employees not just for the present but for the future, looking at not only what has made people successful, but also what is likely to be important and what shortages they have.

10 questions to help you identify high potential leaders

1. Does this person have a proven track record for accomplishing impressive results - not just meeting expectations?
   
2. Does this person take charge and make things happen? Or sit back and let things happen before producing?
   
3. Does this person inspire confidence in their decision-making?
   
4. Can this person lead through persuasion and influence? Can they serve as an effective sounding board to others who are struggling with complex issues?
   
5. Do others trust this person to lead projects and teams, even though they don't have a leadership title?
   
6. Does this person have an understanding of how to separate "what" from "how"? An awareness that establishing the destination before deciding on the mode of transportation is essential
   
7. Can this person keep a global perspective? Are priorities apparent, or do they become mired in the details and tactics?
   
8. Do obstacles stop this person? Or do they represent challenges, not threats?
   
9. What success has this person had with multi-tasking?
   
10. How do unexpected changes affect this person's performance?

Source:ceoonline.com

Are Leaders Born Or Made?

Tuesday 29 January, 2013

by David Brookmire

Just about every day, we read in the news where a CEO has been terminated or "resigns" due to poor performance and a lack of confidence by the Board of Directors. The CEO role - unlike any others in the organisation - has a dramatic impact on the financial performance and morale of the organisation. When they fail, everyone seems to pay, including employees, shareholders, customers, and Board members. Ironically, some of these failed CEOs were superstars in their CEO roles at other companies. It begs the question: What makes or breaks a leader? Is leadership an intrinsic trait? Are some people just born leaders or does leadership require skills that must be continuously learned and nurtured?

Meg Whitman was an outstanding CEO at EBay from 1998 to 2008, helping guide the company from $4million to $8billion in revenues before stepping down. Unfortunately, her performance as HP's CEO has been very inconsistent, causing internal and external stakeholders to lose confidence in her leadership and ability to turn around the technology behemoth. Carol Bartz, formerly CEO of Yahoo before being asked to resign, had a very successful tenure as CEO of Autodesk. From 1992 to 2006, she guided Autodesk to become one of the leading providers of computer designed software. After only 18 months at Yahoo, however, she was removed as CEO amidst poor performance and lack of confidence by investors and the Board of Directors. How is it that leaders shine in one situation and fail in another?

The Center for Creative Leadership, a research firm, surveyed top leaders globally and found that the majority (52.4%) believed leaders were made, believing that leadership is more than just "genetics". A minority (19.1%) believed that leaders were simply born that way. The remaining 28.5% believed leadership to be a combination of these factors - that leaders may have some intrinsic leadership skills (outgoing, intelligent and confident) but have also worked hard to gain valuable experience, perspective and knowledge to maximise their successes.

Leaders are delusional if they think they no longer need any development or coaching once they reach the C-suite. When leaders get complacent - feeling too comfortable in the top job - their successes decline rapidly. Conversely, when leaders depend on trusted advisors, executive coaches and other senior-level minds for counsel and honest feedback, they tend to be more in touch with the realities of their positions, teams and constituents.

This explains why the field of leadership development has grown to the billion dollar market it is today. In the past, C-level executives had limited opportunities for personal or professional growth. Hiring an executive coach was seen as a dirty little secret, as executives didn't want to show any kinks in their armour. But today, hiring executive coaches no longer carries a "stigma".

The wisest leaders understand that the business environment has changed, and executives have the added stressors of global issues to manage, ever-evolving technologies, a tremendously competitive marketplace, and being "on call" 24/7. They recognise that their senior position creates isolation - their team might be reluctant to provide honest, objective feedback that's necessary to help their leaders evolve.

CEOs that work with executive coaches are often regarded as eager to learn, ready to accept honest feedback and willing to be held accountable for their actions - all qualities of a leader who will stay on top. One of the most revealing looks into the use of executive coaches was an article that discussed Michael Dell and his executive coaching.

Faced with the first major technology downfall in 2001, Michael wanted to ensure he and his leadership team worked more cohesively, and he wanted to change the culture at Dell. He felt that change started with him, so he asked for a 360 degree survey and got some tough feedback about how his style put people off and was not inspirational. He made a commitment to change his style to be more appealing and inspirational. Today, Dell still uses assessments for most of their managers, providing annual feedback for their development.

Since then, several CEOs have publicly stated the value of executive coaching during their careers.

Successful CEOs start with a set of leadership traits that have been associated with strong leaders, such as ambition, drive, emotional stability, emotional intelligence, and extraverted personalities that can rally support and action. However, just possessing these traits doesn't mean you'll be a great leader. Leaders must also learn from experience. To prepare for the requirements of their challenging roles, they should develop the prerequisite competencies - shaping strategy, business acumen, seasoned judgment, powerful communications, operational excellence, and the ability to inspire others - which is learned by doing.

There are proven methods that enable organisations to develop their leaders, which include, from most to least effective:

• Moved into new and challenging roles
  
• Given temporary assignments
  
• Implemented projects and taskforces
  
• Received 360 feedback and coaching
  
• Participated in classroom training

Combine the best practices to help your company successfully develop your next generation of leaders:

Select	Evaluate	Build
Previous leadership roles Relevant experience Technical / Functional expertise Education	Ambition Emotional stability Emotional intelligence Extraverted Business Acumen Operational Excellence	Moved into new roles Expat assignments Projects and taskforces 360 feedback and coaching Classroom training

Your own beliefs about leadership will impact your leadership effectiveness and the culture of your company. While it's helpful to have been born with some necessary leadership qualities, that's only part of the equation for success. Hiring the best leaders and providing ongoing development helps ensure that you can "make" the best leaders possible for your company. Your organisation should allocate time and resources towards hiring and developing leadership talent. Elevate your team - and your organisation - by ensuring:

• Business strategy - Leadership is integral to the strategic plan and recognised as a competitive advantage for the company - directly relevant to the current and future states of the organisation.
  
• CEO personal time - Leaders should spend personal time in development, including leading talent reviews, grooming and coaching high potentials, leadership education, and modeling successful leadership development for the company.
  
• Culture of development - Leaders must create cultures where development is valued and rewarded and learning is a key part of the business processes.
  
• Leadership philosophy - Leaders should encourage a "promote from within" practice to ensure that there's continued emphasis on leadership development.
  
• Succession planning - A key HR system needed to help identify and develop future leaders in the organisation.
  
•  Rewards - Incentives should clearly outline expected results, how results will be accomplished, and the leaders' track records' for exporting talent. Leaders should only be promoted if they have demonstrated all three of these outcomes.
  
• Accountability - Leaders must be held accountable for talent development, and be appraised and rewarded for success in this area.
  
• Commitment - Leadership development is a necessity even when economic times are poor. The investment in leadership development must stay constant across business cycles. 
   
   
   
  Source:ceoonline.com

Improving Your Internal CEO Succession Plan

Tuesday 5 February, 2013

by Greg Lourey

CEO succession is a topic every organisation will address at some point in time. Whether it's because the Board is in favour of a fresh face, or due to the abrupt departure of a CEO. The choice to parachute in an experienced CEO or promote from within is not always a clear one. Too often businesses fail to consider long term strategies to encourage leadership prospects from within their own organisations.

One common characteristic of many successful companies is the adoption of a robust succession plan, and the implementation of processes that focus on developing leaders. This ensures senior leaders are aligned with the organisation's strategic goals and potential leaders are identified and nurtured. This allows for the smooth transition of leadership when one CEO replaces another and a solid foundation to move the business forward.
It is critical to ensure that a CEO is the right fit for an organisation. Developing internal successors has proven to guarantee longer tenure rates, as opposed to appointing outside candidates.
Making succession a priority has other positive benefits outside of finding and developing the next CEO. Organisations that plan for succession often promote proactive systems for leadership development. This includes coaching, mentoring and feedback tools to help potential leaders grow their capacity to handle increasing complexity.  This naturally leads to greater engagement from staff members, encouraging increased productivity, innovation and collaboration.
Here are four tips on how to improve your internal succession plans:

1. Understand what motivates your team
   
   Senior management needs to give up on the idea that all employees want to progress to leadership roles or be CEOs. This may not be the definition of career success for every employee. A rewarding career may constitute quality training, challenging client work, client contact, autonomy in decision making, leadership development or appropriate remuneration for their effort and the value they add.
   
2. Have a clear vision
   
   CEOs and company leaders need to have a clear vision for their organisation. What is its purpose? What does it stand for? Once this is clear, they have a basis on which to shape career and succession plans for their employees.
   
3. Think long-term
   
   Succession planning is not a 12 month process. Company leaders need to be considering succession at least five years in advance to manage the process effectively. This includes identifying employees with potential and the desire for leadership.
   
4. Provide leadership development support to potential successors
   
   This means more than just providing them with the right set of skills, but also enabling them to participate in executive coaching and leadership development programs aimed at building their capacity to deal with complex operating environments. 

Source:ceoonline.com

How to get 752 New Business Ideas?

By Gijs van Wulfen

Last week an innovation team of G+J Publishers in Amsterdam generated 752 new business ideas in 4 hours. How did they do it? Five reasons caused the explosion of ideas during their ideation workshop.

Published: March 28, 2013 | 0 Comments and 11 Reactions
In: Gijs van Wulfen

1. They have a real need for innovation. Print is going down and digital is going up. There’s a real need to innovate, felt by everybody.
2. They are a wonderful multidisciplinary team. Decision makers, line managers and experts work together in an innovation team of 15 people. Everyone is involved and has an open mind.
3. They get all the support they need. Although the team members have more than full-time jobs, They make time for innovation. And they are fully supported by the CEO and COO to prioritize innovation.
4. They follow a structured method. They use the FORTH innovation method, a structured series of workshops to generate mini new business cases. A method helps you to do the right things in the right order and it helps maintaining focus and discipline.
5. They got new insights. Prior to the ideation workshop the teammembers were inspired during 6 weeks discovering innovation opportunities and relevant customers’ frictions. New insights deliver new ideas.

Of course it’s also an art to choose out of 752 ideas the right ideas to work out as new concepts and later in the process as mini new business cases. How do you do this in practice? More on this in my next article.


Source:http://www.innovationmanagement.se

How Crowdsourcing Impacts Innovation Portfolio Management

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By Rick WielensinShare

 

In this in-depth article we present how Open innovation meshes with crowd sourcing, drawing on ideation, market needs and opportunities, to fuel a balanced portfolio with actionable innovation challenges, or « the right things to do », and converges these with a need driven approach to source the ways of « doing things right ». We will illustrate this innovation continuity with a number of examples and a focus onto the food and drink industry.

Published: February 21, 2013 | 1 Comment and 34 Reactions
In: In-depth articles, Learning Programs

This article is a part of a Learning Program from Ninesigma
Written by Rick Wielens, CEO, Ninesigma

This article is suggested for: Beginners Intermediate Advanced Large Organizations Small/Med Organizations

Whether it is called social media, community management, ecosystems, crowd capital, predictive markets, wikis or just simply crowd sourcing, having access to this cognitive surplus has become key to any innovation strategy or program. By definition, crowd sourcing consists of individuals, more or less isolated, and this makes per se for highly dispersed  information, creating a challenge of sourcing, managing and curation. Open Innovation, a super-set of crowd sourcing, is an important component in the innovation arsenal and can be highly effective in making sense of the chaos of dispersed knowledge and connects the dots between need ideation and their realisation.
The Internet has had a profound influence on innovation practices. Crowd sourcing has tipped the innovation balance from the domination of large corporations towards smaller entities and access to these innovation sources has become an important part of innovation strategy. Customer crowd sourcing, such as MyStarbucksIdea, has opened new avenues of identifying customer needs and trends. Another highly powerful way of applying crowd sourcing is in the identification of technology solutions to fulfil needs, whether they are customer or corporate. Needs driven innovation and Open Innovation are at the convergence of these two crowd sourcing methods.

Background: From Research to Search

Firstly, this article provides a background and sets the innovation scene, illustrated by some of the beliefs related to open innovation, and explains how open innovation inserts into innovation portfolio planning and value creation in general.

The need driven innovation model

Secondly, the article introduces and discusses the “need driven innovation model”, providing a vision of an alternative approach to sourcing possible solutions to fulfil client and industry needs. By placing the innovation cursor within the needs, rather than the solutions, is particularly effective and Open Innovation at this boundary accelerates innovation cycles, opens the solution horizon far beyond industry boundaries and detects and connects to the unobvious. A number of innovation examples will be cited to illustrate how need-driven innovation engenders new opportunities and business models.

Key capabilities needed for open innovation

Thirdly, the article presents a number of key capabilities needed for open innovation with a perspective on identifying and realising latent customer needs.  These key capabilities make up a virtuous circle where each item feeds from the precedent.

1. Define a balanced need portfolio (priority, budget, resources, objective….)
2. Transform the needs into well-crafted challenges
3. Diffuse the challenges (internally or externally) to gather quality solutions
4. Assure the clear execution of the solutions by absorbing and integrating into
   the portfolio action plan
5. Continually monitor to detect opportunities, threats, signals of change and trends… these are used to keep the dynamic of the portfolio needs (item 1)

These key capabilities will be elaborated upon inside the full article.

Case study: how Kraft integrated Open Innovation Crowd Sourcing

NineSigma has been active in Open Innovation crowd sourcing since 2000 and has run over one thousand highly diverse projects in food and drinks industry, ranging from melt proof chocolate packaging to microbial contamination detection.
The article will present a case study that shows how Kraft has integrated Open Innovation Crowd Sourcing in a very effective way to solve their challenge for an innovative packaging solution to prevent chocolate from melting. This example will show how preliminary work on identifying “the right things to do” can result in “doing things right”, to accelerate identifying and acquiring the solution.

Lessons learned from over 12 years of Open Innovation project management

The article concludes with an overview of lessons learned by NineSigma from over 12 years of Open Innovation project management. These 5 lessons involve:

• Create an environment that nurtures, encourages and rewards open innovation
• Define clear challenges and process ownership
• Decide about the span of control, both internally and externally
• Establish realistic time-lines and budgets.
• Plan your resource allocation.

We believe that there are three trends related to the future of Open Innovation and that can apply transversally across many industries: Collaborative Sustainability – Value Chain Open Innovation  -  Innovation Portals:

Future trends

The article continues with a vision of the future of Open Innovation in the consumer goods industry. The food and drink industry and more specifically fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, like Procter and Gamble and Unilever, have been early adopters of open innovation practices. Their vision and deliberate outreach to the global open innovation community goes far beyond sourcing new technology, but embraces the search for new product ideas and opportunities, innovative packaging and materials and processes. We see that in those companies where Open Innovation is embedded into the company strategy that there is a deliberate overlap in their use of crowd sourcing in the ideation process and technology identification and acquisition.


Source:http://www.innovationmanagement.se

Understanding your Innovation Culture – A Case-Study from Swisslog

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By Colin NelsoninShare

InnovationManagement is delighted to present a brand new Case Study highlighting the challenges of creating an innovation culture that: supports new product/service development initiatives, facilitates the creation of idea campaigns, spurs employee engagement and develops business value. In this article, Colin Nelson, Director of Strategic Consulting at HYPE Innovation, delves deeper into how collaborative innovation challenges were identified, managed and successfully overcome at Swisslog.

Published: March 25, 2013 | 2 Comments and 25 Reactions
In: Learning Programs, Think Tank

This article is a part of a Learning Program from HYPE.
Written by Colin Nelson, Director of Strategic Consulting, HYPE.

This article is suggested for: Beginners Intermediate Advanced Large Organizations Small/Med Organizations

How do your company’s employees react when asked to participate in enterprise collaborative innovation?

• Do employees cheer enthusiastically, as they are finally able to get involved?
• Perhaps there’s a degree of cynicism having seen corporate initiatives fail in the past?
• Do employees understand what you’re trying to do?

It can be hard to understand whether you have an ‘innovation culture’ and to what extent that’s propagated the organization, however, running idea campaigns helps to develop a clearer picture.

An example from Swisslog

Swisslog appointed a new Innovation Manager in 2011, an experienced innovator from the Aeropace industry – Mike Hatrick.  A cornerstone of Mike’s innovation program was to establish an online corporate innovation application, allowing anyone in the enterprise to share ideas against current business challenges and opportunities.  As a new employee, Mike wasn’t sure what opinion employees held about corporate innovation, the same challenge for new innovation managers in any role.
“I had introduced a similar collaboration platform in my previous job” says Hatrick. “I remember launching the first challenge and waiting pensively to see what would happen. Would people participate? Would we get a few ideas or many ideas? At Swisslog it was just the same; I couldn’t know for sure what would happen”.
During an initial series of innovation campaigns, Swisslog and their innovation partner HYPE looked to understand how the program was perceived and how to drive more innovation from the 1,200 employees invited to participate.
After some initial small scale enthusiasm participation seemed to drift and overall engagement dropped.  It was clear that the culture wasn’t the same as it had been in Mike’s previous role, so his approach had to change.

“I came to Swisslog feeling relatively experienced in this field having already run 15 campaigns, all with high levels of participation” Mike continues, “When participation at Swisslog started to drop-off in the fourth and fifth campaigns I was concerned; I had anticipated the audience to be highly engaged by then. In fact, I wasn’t just concerned – I was worried, because something was happening that I didn’t understand”.

Understanding corporate innovation culture

What Swisslog experienced, like many organizations, is that the employees could be grouped into the following categories:

Unless there’s been a history of innovation failures or substantial marketing associated with the new program, perhaps most innovation professionals would expect their organization to fall into the following shape after an initial 3 month running period:

Most companies would say they’re looking to pursue an innovation culture.  At its most simple level, this means a select group of employees are highly enthusiastic about getting involved, and the majority are happy to participate when they can. Importantly, all employees understand the value of getting involved and will share ideas, thoughts and concepts.
Many expect the biggest challenge is to raise awareness and build belief, thus moving those in the red, blue and yellow categories into the green categories.
Once you know what ‘shape’ your organization is, how do you best move it forward?

Understanding Swisslog

Firstly, HYPE and Swisslog took a careful look at the participation statistics over time, in addition to the quality of contributions; they jointly established that most people were still were in the blue and red categories.
In-fact, what we discovered was the organizational shape was as follows:

Summary findings

• Some employees had moved from green participants into red ‘skeptics’ as they hadn’t heard what had happened to their ideas
• Although everyone had received marketing and campaign invitations, the sponsors attached to each had failed to get their attention and therefore were still considered ‘unaware’
• Some people had moved from green  ‘engaged’ category to yellow watchers because they found the  topics of the fourth and fifth campaigns too challenging or because the novelty had “worn off”

Mike observes “I found it extremely useful to start viewing my user community with this model. With any problem it’s important to gather and understand facts and root cause before trying to fix it. For example discovering that we had a large proportion of skeptics affected the actions that we took. I also became more aware of the importance of the small group of Innovation Enthusiasts and that I needed to keep them highly engaged”.

Setting the program back on track

Swisslog and HYPE refocused the program with a new direction, addressing the following challenges:

• A need to build belief and confidence in the process
• A need to communicate outcomes on a regular basis
• A need to build sponsorship with senior stakeholders

A new series of innovation campaigns was established.  Senior sponsors were sought for each campaign, preferably non-innovation professionals to demonstrate that a wide range of stakeholders were getting involved.  The topics selected were relatively tactical, yet in-line with the corporate innovation initiatives, so everyone could see the correlation with initiatives they cared about.  This enabled Swisslog to talk about progress and actions in wider communications with the company, therefore building more confidence in the program.
“Getting an executive sponsor on-board for each challenge was by far the most important improvement we made. It does require more effort up-front, and typically I had to change the timings of campaigns to suit the sponsor, but the benefits were extremely visible. For example I could see new functional/ geographic groups getting involved, particularly from the sponsor’s area of the company. Review teams were more engaged and proactive and of course ideas started to find a faster route to implementation. It was clear that the users perceived the program to be more credible and relevant to them”.

Key benefits & outcomes

• Participation rose dramatically. Campaigns were attracting less than 20 ideas each before the change in approach, yet the most open campaigns were attracting nearly 180 ideas.
• The quality of submissions increased.
• Greater diversity of ideas.  Content came from different parts of the organization, increasingly from pockets that had never engaged before.

Next steps for Swisslog

Together with HYPE, Swisslog aims to establish an innovation culture which ensures everyone’s aware and engaged with the innovation process, moving the organizational shape to the following over time.

In order to do so, Swisslog will be focusing on:

• Building momentum within the employee base
• Careful communication to show success and build belief in the process
• A clear execution path for all ideas and concepts demonstrating the steps each sponsor will take

Hatrick concludes: “Our program has been running for one year now and has delivered good results. Importantly, the user community is well engaged and the observations we made mid-year helped us to make the right changes to keep building a successful program. The success of the program is all down to the participants, without whom there are no ideas or collaboration! We have to keep the program vibrant and relevant to them no matter which of the categories they are in. For example, we have monthly newsletters to convince the ‘Innovation Skeptics’ that the approach works and make the ‘Unaware’ more aware. We are also introducing Mobile Apps to improve accessibility that should help ‘The watchers’ graduate towards being ‘Innovation Enthusiasts’ ”.

From Chaos to Control: New Research Reveals the Global State of Resource Management and Capacity Planning

1
inShare

In the newly released Resource Management and Capacity Planning Benchmark Study, research is identifying best practices to avoid wasting resources on the wrong opportunities, leading to profit loss and missed market windows. Read more about the results from the study and how you can assess your company’s maturity level, determine what challenges you face, and leverage best practices shared by mature, successful companies.

Published: March 21, 2013 | 0 Comments and 5 Reactions
In: Learning Programs

This article is a part of a Learning Program from Planview.
Written by Jerry Manas, Senior Editor, Planview

This article is suggested for: Beginners Intermediate Advanced Large Organizations Small/Med Organizations

According to the 3^rd Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study, published June 2012, product developers’ top pain points include too many projects for their available resources and decisions that go back and forth and/or are made late or ineffectively.¹  These are perennial issues for organizations far and wide. The newly released Resource Management and Capacity Planning Benchmark Study, designed to dig deeper into these commonly cited pain points, shows that primary causes are constant change, not having enough visibility into capacity, and ineffective demand prioritization, resulting in lost productivity, continued crisis mode operation, and delayed time to market.^²
The study showcases input from more than 600 executives and managers from across the globe that control the human resources within their organization to deliver products, projects, and/or service engagements in the functional areas of IT, product development, services and/or enterprise project management offices (PMOs).
So as it appears that product developers are not alone in the challenges they face, the question becomes, “How can we learn from each other?” The bottom line of the study yields an undeniable truth: Organizations committed to mature business practices, technology, and processes solve more strategic problems and experience tangible business benefits.
Through the lens of a maturity model created specifically for the survey, the report describes organizations’ pain points and causes, business risks, software use, and best practices. The results show that, in employing the recommended best practices, organizations can move up the maturity scale from a state of chaos to a state of control and optimization.
“This study shows just how much risk businesses take on when they don’t address resource management and capacity planning challenges and continue to overcommit and underutilize their finite resources,” said Maureen Carlson, partner, Appleseed Partners. “The good news is that a quarter of organizations in this study are breaking through to solve more strategic problems than their counterparts facing chaos and basic supply and demand visibility issues.”

Key Findings:

Click to enlarge

• Shared resources without centralized planning: 80 percent of respondents share resources across projects, teams, departments, and/or countries. However, only 45 percent report having a resource management and capacity planning function, resulting in resource misuse, misalignment, and cost and quality issues.
• Top maturity level evades most: Only five percent report being at the highest maturity level. Two-thirds of organizations are in early to mid-level maturity brackets.
• Top pain point is “constant change”: This is followed by “not enough visibility into capacity” and “ineffective demand prioritization.” Lower maturity organizations have less insight into demand as well, making project prioritization challenging.
• Top business risks are “lost productivity” and “remaining in crisis mode”: The risk of remaining in crisis mode reduces by half or more as organizations move up the maturity spectrum. Delayed time to market and wasting high-value resources on low-value projects tied for the third-highest business risk.
• Software usage varies by maturity level: 60 percent of mature organizations use enterprise software, and in particular project portfolio management (PPM) solutions, better enabling them to select the right opportunities and match the right people to them. By contrast, nearly 70 percent of less mature companies use spreadsheets and project tools as their primary tools, making basic visibility into demand or capacity challenging.

Mature Organizations Share Characteristics

The study finds key similarities and best practices in companies that are successfully bridging resource management and capacity planning to move from chaos to control. Mature organizations:

• Secure executive buy-in
• Have dedicated functions to run resource management and capacity planning activities
• Use project portfolio management software to optimize their resource capacity

As a result, these companies can better prioritize projects, see what people are working on, identify bottlenecks, and run what-if scenarios on demand to adapt to change. The business benefits include increased productivity, maximized revenue, and lower costs.

What does this mean for Product Development Organizations?

Forty four percent of respondents to this survey came from product development organizations. Next month we’ll share specifics about their responses as well as key takeaways and recommendations. In the meantime, much can be learned from the cross-functional findings in the full benchmark report.
Get your complimentary copy to assess your company’s maturity level, determine what challenges you face, and leverage best practices shared by mature, successful companies: Download here.
You can also get the 3^rd Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study to discover the challenges your peers and competitors are facing and what they’re doing to improve their situations.
By Jerry Manas

About the Study:
Appleseed Partners and OpenSky Research, independent research firms, commissioned by Planview, conducted the first in-depth benchmark study on the state of resource management and capacity planning at project based organizations. The survey, run during November and December 2012, garnered participation from more than 600 global executives and managers responsible for the planning and utilization of resources to deliver services, projects, and/or products for their organizations.


Source:http://www.innovationmanagement.se

Identifying Leadership Doorways

Monday 2 July, 2012

by Daniel Holden

As a leader there are opportunities or 'doors' before you which you are invited to walk through. On the other side are new ways of working with your teams and being a great leader. The question is, do you recognise the doors in front of you now?

Old ways of operating as leaders within organisations are crumbling; reacting to problems with yesterday's strategies will not work anymore. In today's complex world we need leaders who commit themselves and their organisations to learning how to hold complexity and competently perform.
Based on the theory of integral leadership developed by Ken Wilber, cofounder of the Integral Institute in the US, there are four areas leaders need to operate in to be successful. If we consider these areas as doorways, the offer insights into how to become a more effective leader and how to better drive overall business performance and success.

The outer system doorway - The value and limitations of key performance indicators

Most successful organisations survive because they execute well on the right side of the integral framework. However, operating mostly in this area can cause potential opportunities and innovation to be neglected as the business is driven mainly by financial performance.
Common problems for businesses operating in this area include:

• A disengaged workforce - deeper passions and desires are seldom uncovered and acted on as they're not considered relevant to business performance
  
• Concerns and fears are only reluctantly brought to the surface
  
• Innovation struggles as leaders are reduced to individual, tactical performers who closely watch and guard their own silos
  
• Organisations are focused exclusively on solving problems and cannot realise a new future.

The outer self doorway - High performance and accountability begin

This arena of leadership is everything we can see, hear, touch and measure regarding surface and external individual performance. Communication from leaders in this area typically involves meetings and performance feedback that is one-way, with an emphasis on presentations, updates, and status reports.
The best leaders, however, learn a discipline that focuses on the language of behavior and use this to break through to their employees and teams. This discipline involves three key components that become the focus of two-way, not one -way conversation. These are:

1. Critical performance incidents - "Here is what I see and hear you doing"
   
2. Performance impact - The personal consequences of someone's behavior, either positive or negative. This kind of information can affect a shift in performance
   
3. Consequences on the team, customers and others - The larger consequences of a person's behaviors, when viewed in light of collective, can ensure feedback isn't too personal but connects the individual's behaviour to business performance.

The inner self doorway - Where sustainable breakthrough begins

This is where each of us secretly lives. We make meaning of our lives and our work here. It's where our motivation and passion for contributing originates and where our vision and hopes and our doubts and fears are born.
Issues of trust, confidentiality, the holding of bitterness against others, resistance to change, the underpinnings of all teamwork, strategic change and organisational excellence, all originate here. Sadly, much of this rich inner landscape goes unexamined. We then try to undergo mergers, drive change and build more innovation into our processes when caution and fear are the prevailing passions. It simply doesn't work.
What is true of elite sports teams is true of any team that wants to pursue extraordinary results: you must have the heart and commitment of people behind you. Heart and commitment lie here, just behind our limiting assumptions.

The inner system doorway - Your culture contains your desired future

This doorway is concerned with vulnerability and the authenticity to say the unspeakable. Every organisation has its scapegoats. When things go wrong these groups become the necessary targets for our frustration and confusion. Senior leaders frequently become targets; the union, front line supervisors, field operations or headquarters, the regulators, our competitors, all take a turn in distracting us from finding real solutions to the challenges we face.
If we don't recognise the real problems our solutions will miss the mark. The real problem always involves us. Until we see our own contribution to the current circumstances we will be unable to see our potential as creators of a new and more viable future.
The trouble in many organisations is we define challenges as problems in ways that are too small to care about and not large enough to inspire.
The most significant differences in leaders are linked to the amount of complexity they have learned to hold, or the number of doorways they've learned to walk through and inhabit. Unprecedented challenges like those we see today require unprecedented responses from leaders and their teams
What doorways do you stand before now? How will you respond? The future happens whether we want it to or not. Why not consciously create it?




Source:

The Innovation Disconnect

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By Paul SloaneinShare

CEOs talk enthusiastically about the need for innovation. Workers at the front line can see the needs and opportunities for fresh ideas. But somehow nothing happens. Ideas do not get implemented. Innovation grinds to a halt. This is the innovation disconnect and it has to be tackled head on.

Published: December 17, 2012 | 7 Comments and 25 Reactions
In: Organization & Culture

I recently ran an innovation training workshop for a global pharmaceutical company.   The participants were all high-potential junior executives.  One of the exercises produced some novel and feasible ideas that could possibly lead to a significant increase in sales.  ‘What should we do with these ideas now?’  I asked.   Nobody said a word.  One or two people shook their heads.  ‘What is the chance of any of these ideas being implemented?’ was my next question.  ‘Zero’ was the reply from one delegate.  On the wall was the corporate mission statement which included the word innovation.
‘If the CEO of the whole group were here and I asked him whether innovation was important what would he say?’ I asked.  ‘He would say it was essential,’ one person said – and others agreed.  So what is going on here?  There is a huge disconnect.
We discussed the issue and what came out was a sorry tale of corporate misalignment.  The experience of the delegates was completely at odds with executive statements about innovation and entrepreneurship.  The corporate leaders made grand statements about the need for agility and innovation but their actions belied their words.
Recently the company had run a major creativity exercise to generate and evaluate ideas to boost health care product adoption.  It had resulted in hundreds of ideas from which ten promising proposals had been short-listed as winners.  The people who submitted these ideas all won prizes.  However, none of the ideas was implemented.  What is more, although the leaders called for more innovation, their actions resulted in more rules, procedures and compliance that made approval of new ideas even more complex and difficult than before.  Where innovations had occurred, often in some of the smaller country subsidiaries, they had had to overcome serious opposition from central staff units who wanted conformity and not diversity of approach.  Furthermore the successful innovations had not been broadcast to other subsidiaries nor replicated in them.  The company was compliant, centralized, risk averse and potentially headed for obsolescence.
People do not believe what leaders say.  They believe what leaders do.  Actions speak louder than words.   If the CEO says that innovation is important but she penalizes risk-taking and rewards conformity then the message is clear – keep your head down and don’t rock the boat.  It is not enough to talk the talk – the leadership team must walk the walk.  Fine speeches and grandiose mission statements about innovation and creativity don’t cut it.  Actions have to deliver on the promises.
The innovation disconnect occurs when corporate statements and employee experiences are inconsistent.  People become disillusioned and cynical.  Why bother submitting ideas when there is no chance of them being evaluated or approved?  The people at the top want innovation and the people at the bottom have lots of ideas for improvement but somewhere in the middle there is a jungle of approval complexity and caution that inhibits change.  In his book, Managing Change, John Kotter identifies intermediate supervisors as one of the major obstacles to successful change.  The people in the middle are committed and busy so they follow the rules and turn down suggestions that disrupt the operation.
What is needed to bridge the innovation disconnect is actions that reinforce the words.  Leaders must demonstrate that innovation and risk-taking are desirable and rewarded.   They must implement some of the best suggestions and publicize successful results.   They must reach across the organization to empower and encourage people at lower levels to prototype new ideas.  They must allow some failures in the pursuit of experiment and innovation.  They must encourage sharing of innovative experiences (both successful and unsuccessful) in the cause of learning.  Of course compliance, quality standards and regulation must be observed but they have to be kept in balance.   The leaders must constantly strive to overcome the systemic inertia and the complexity of approval processes that naturally occur in larger organizations.  They must fight the innovation disconnect with actions not words.



Source:http://www.innovationmanagement.se

The Seven Essential Characteristics of Innovative Companies

By Jeffrey Baumgartner

What makes a company innovative? Innovation is nothing more than a tool that enables companies to achieve unique, strategic goals. It should not simply be a slogan, nor an end unto itself, argues Jeffrey Baumgartner. To be truly innovative, an organization should have seven essential characteristics.

Published: December 18, 2012 | 8 Comments and 117 Reactions
In: Organization & Culture

What makes for an innovative company? An innovation initiative is not enough. Having the word “innovation” in your company slogan or all over your web site is not enough. Indeed, I would argue that any kind of focus on innovation as an end is detrimental to innovation. Innovation is nothing more than a tool that enables companies to achieve unique, strategic goals. Here are seven essential characteristics of innovative companies. How well does your organization do?

1. Unique and Relevant Strategy

Arguably, the most defining characteristic of a truly innovative company is having a unique and relevant strategy. We all know what companies like Apple, Facebook and Google do. That’s because they make their strategies clear and relentless follow them. An innovative smaller player may not be recognised globally, but its leaders, employees, business partners and customers all will have a clear idea of the company’s strategy. If a business does not have definable, unique strategy, it will not be innovative. Bland strategies, such as “to be the best”, do not provide a path to innovation in the same way clearer strategies, such as “to be on the cutting edge of mobile communications technology,” “to build the world’s safest cars”or “to deliver anything anywhere” do. If your strategy is vague or fails to differentiate your company from the competition, you should change this situation as quickly as possible!

2. Innovation Is a Means to Achieve Strategic Goals

Highly innovative companies do not see innovation as an end, but rather as a means to achieving strategic goals. Just as a good camera is an essential tool that enables the photographer to take professional images and the saw is an essential tool for the carpenter, innovation is an essential tool for visionary companies intent on achieving their strategic goals. Indeed, if you look at the web sites of the world’s most innovative companies, they tend not to trumpet innovation, but rather corporate vision.

3. Innovators Are Leaders

The one thing innovation provides more than anything else is market leadership. When companies use innovation to achieve strategic goals, they inevitably take the lead in their markets. Unfortunately, this does not always translate to being the most successful or profitable. Amazon has been an innovator from the beginning, setting many of the standards for e-commerce. Nevertheless, it took some years for the company to become profitable. Cord was one of the world’s most innovative car companies, launching cutting edge innovations such as front wheel drive and pop-up headlights – in the 1920s and 30s. However the company was never very successful financially and went out of business in 1938. On the other hand, innovators like Apple and Google have been financially successful as a result of their innovation. In short, innovators are leaders, but not always profitable leaders!

4. Innovators Implement

Most businesses have a lot of creative employees with a lot of ideas. Some of those ideas are even relevant to companies’ needs. However, one thing that differentiates innovators from wannabe innovators is that innovators implement ideas. Less innovative companies talk more about ideas than implementing them!

5. Failure Is an Option

I would argue the the most critical element of business culture, for an innovative company, is giving employees freedom and encouragement to fail. If employees know that they can fail without endangering their careers, they are more willing to take on risky, innovative projects that offer huge potential rewards to their companies. On the other hand, if employees believe that being part of a failed project will have professional consequences, they will avoid risk – and hence innovation – like the plague. More importantly, if senior managers reward early failure, employees are far more likely to evaluate projects regularly and kill those projects that are failing — before that failure becomes too expensive. This frees up resources and budget for new innovative endeavours. However, in businesses where failure is not an option, employees will often stick with failing projects, investing ever more resources in hopes that the project will eventually succeed. When it does not, losses are greater and reputations are ruined. As a result, companies that reward failure often fail less than those that discourage it.

6. Environment of Trust

The Innovative company provides its employees with an environment of trust. There is a lot of risk involved in innovation. Highly creative ideas often initially sound stupid. If employees fear ridicule for sharing outrageous ideas, they will not share such ideas. Likewise, if employees fear reprimand for participating in unsuccessful projects, they will not participate (see item 5 above). If employees do not trust each other, they will be watching their backs all the time. If they fear managers will steal their ideas and claim them as their own, employees will not share ideas. On the other hand, if employees know they can take reasonable risks without fear, if they know outrageous ideas are welcome, if they know that their managers will champion their ideas and credit them for those ideas, these employees can be creative, implement ideas and drive the company’s innovation. In short, creativity and innovation thrive when people in an organization trust each other and their organization.

7. Autonomy

Along with trust, individual and team autonomy is a key component of innovation. If you give individuals and teams clear goals together with the freedom to find their own paths for achieving those goals, you create fertile ground for innovation. But, if managers watch over their subordinates’ shoulders, micro-managing their every move, you stifle the creativity and individual thought that is necessary for innovation. Of course giving employees autonomy means they may make mistakes. They may choose inefficient routes to achieving goals. But at worst, they will learn from their mistakes and inefficiencies. At best, they will discover new and better ways of accomplishing objectives. Most importantly, if you hire intelligent, capable, creative people and give them the freedom to solve problems, they will do so. And, in so doing, they well help innovation to thrive throughout the company.
What Do You Think?
There you have it, the seven essential characteristics of a creative company. What do you think? How well does your company fit? Have I missed an essential characteristic? I’d love to know your thoughts.



Source:http://www.innovationmanagement.se

Creating Innovation Cultures in Companies: CEOs, People and Collaboration Tools

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inShare

This article shares two strategies that are proving most effective for CEOs that aim to make their companies more innovative: developing a creative culture (people’s behaviors) and applying new processes and technologies.

Published: February 1, 2013 | 2 Comments and 28 Reactions
In: Organization & Culture

Written by Fran Chuan & Agustin Ramos

This article is suggested for: Beginners Intermediate Advanced Large Organizations Small/Med Organizations

The summary of The 2012 Conference Board CEO Challenge reveals that the top two concerns for CEOs are innovation and human capital, while the top two CEO strategies to cope with them are creating a culture of innovation and applying new technologies (product, process, information, etc.).¹
Today’s market expectations, competitive pressures and pace of change make the CEOs look at innovation as “the” solution. CEOs tend to do it however in an episodic manner, without discipline and without clear expectations on return. Executives would like to move boldly with big and discontinuous choices rather than with incremental innovations, but they miss clear strategies, structures and procedures. This results in most ideas going to the drawer without ever seeing the market light. Consequently, the company retreats to more familiar territories, and the cycle of people’s frustrations repeats itself. ²

Innovation as a discipline – creating a culture

This is a good starting point for the company, as it generates a desire for change, and there is no action without desire. Innovation is a choice, a strategy. As Deming said, nobody forces a company to become innovative. Converting the desire into action requires an intentional initiative, systematically planned and organized like any other important management activity – strategic planning, implementation of ERP systems, etc. At the same time, there are still many executives that consider innovation a peripheral or luxurious activity.
Innovation must be understood as a discipline in its double meaning. Discipline is a field of knowledge (like Finance Marketing or Six Sigma), which requires “discipline” or rigor in the approach. It is not magic but deliberate, it is systematic and with some degree of predictability. Unfortunately, our under-standing of innovation lags thirty years behind that of, for example, quality. The good news is that it can be learnt, practiced and fine-tuned with a rigorous approach through continuous experimentation.
Creating a culture of innovation in the company gives the CEOs an opportunity to exercise leadership, showing their desire with actions rather than with words only. Walk the talk. How much time is committed in their calendars to innovation or devoted to innovation in the Management Team meetings? What is the message that their Management Teams receive consistently from them? Then, how is this commitment communicated to the organization?

The difference between success and failure of the innovation initiatives lies in having strong company values to create an environment that generates entrepreneurial behaviors.

Many organizations approach innovation with the same left-brain elements as any other discipline, dedicating resources, processes and measures to track the progress. They are all needed, but not enough as they forget critical right-brain elements. The difference between success and failure of the innovation initiatives lies in having strong company values to create an environment that generates entrepreneurial behaviors.³
Assessing the current situation in which the organization is at present under the perspective of these six left and right pillars will give the CEOs and the Management Team an understanding of the key gaps between the current and the desired situation, allowing them to first design and then implement the changes required to create the necessary culture of innovation amongst the people in the organization.

CEOs as leaders of people

Revolutions start with people. Cultures start with Leaders. How many of the 5Es of leadership are shown in this communication?⁴ All great leaders have an empowering and motivating vision. A vision is like a lighthouse that guides the people through the journey, also in stormy weather, transmitting to them a desire to make the journey, arrive to the desired end and become part of a winning team. Developing and communicating this vision is a critical first step in the journey towards innovation, and then defining the focus and the rules, allowing experimentation, rewarding learning (also from failures), not allowing mediocrity, holding the people accountable and providing them the tools that will make the journey more effective and enjoyable.
Emerging trends and technological changes are having a significant impact on the ways of doing business. Cloud computing, enterprise mobility devices as doorways, fluid collaboration technology, the conversation economy via social computing and the commoditization of analytics will make data and decision making key competitive differentiators. ⁵ ⁶
An academic approach to learning from previous experiences in other companies will help set up the base. Involving consultants to provide supporting seminars on creativity, on enrolling the organization into the journey to a new culture, providing personal and group coaching if needed, are tools within the reach of the CEOs and Management Teams to increase the effectiveness of the change in culture.

Online collaboration tools are becoming critical in managing the company development and the change process, especially in those cases where the teams are geographically distributed.

CEOs can therefore provide these tools to take along the journey to change. The Forrester report shows that on line collaboration tools are becoming critical in managing the company development and the change process, especially in those cases where the teams are geographically distributed. There is a growing trend to make use of the new technologies and collaboration tools/platforms. Similarly, there is still some questioning on feasibility amongst IT leaders. At the same time they report that SaaS helps to improve the business agility.

Click to enlarge

We can see many of these tools becoming available to companies at different levels of complexity, offering different versions for different company sizes – for example Chaordix⁷, a unique methodology and expert services with advanced technology to harness the power of crowdsourcing for companies; or easycrit©⁸, an innovation management platform that helps companies systematize a continuous, broad and multidimensional approach to business innovation. Heavy IT platform investments are not required, with Cloud computing reducing the entry barrier and facilitating the implementation⁹. It is critical for employees to see these collaboration tools as something that makes their job more efficient and their life easier, rather than as one more task to perform on top of their daily duties.
In conclusion, many companies claim that people are their most valuable asset. At the same time, many of them also forget about people when making the commitment to become innovative. Leading people into a motivating journey towards creative ways of working, treating them with respect, making them accountable for results and providing them the tools to make the journey fascinating will help CEOs bring the discipline of innovation into their companies and achieve better business results in a faster changing world.



Source:http://www.innovationmanagement.se

Goal Getting - Not Just Goal Setting

Monday 16 July, 2012

by Warwick Merry

Are you affected by bright shiny objects? If so, you’re not alone. Most people have a strong idea of what they are after and then as they set off toward their goal, they get distracted, if not completely side-tracked. So how do you stay on track? How do you remain focussed on what you are really after?

Five key elements of being a goal getter

1. Understand what your goal is and write it down
   
   It's good to take action, but it needs to be relevant to what you're after. Knowing it is a great start but it is not enough. Have clarity about it too. "Increase sales" is very different to "Sales in the meals area of $3 million". Place the written goal somewhere where you can see it daily. This assists in minimising the impact of the bright shiny objects!
   
2. Know the WHY behind the goal
   
   A goal on its own is not enough of a driver. The goal won't speak to you as strongly as the 'Why' behind the goal. That is where the emotion is and where your commitment and drive will come from.
   
   For example, "To have a million dollars by the time I'm 40" will not drive you as much as "Have paid off investments worth one million dollars by the time I am 40 so I can retire at 50". The 'Why' will get you out of bed in the morning when you don't really want to go. The stronger the 'Why' the more likely you will be to achieve the goal.
   
3. Take daily action towards your goal
   
   This is the key difference between a goal getter and a goal setter. Goal setters write lists of goals and then wait for them to magically appear. Goal getters take at least one piece of action each day to bring them closer to their goal.
   
   The one step may be to register for next year's Leadership Conference as you work towards a senior leadership position. It could be to smile more and show gratitude to your staff as you work towards having a preferred place of employment. Whatever it is, you need to take daily action towards your goal and maintain your focus on the bigger picture.
   
4. Celebrate success
   
   If you can make celebrating success a habit, then success becomes a habit. It doesn't have to be for major successes either. It can be that small thing you have achieved that you acknowledge. Maybe you got to the first checkpoint of a project or maybe you successfully gave up sugar for the day. Larger events such as promotions, bonuses, engagements and building openings need celebration too.
   
   Whatever your achievement is, be sure to celebrate with the appropriate size celebration. Why not create a 'Celebration shopping list' and match the celebrations to your current to do list?
   
5. Be accountable
   
   In the same way that it's easier to exercise when you have made arrangements to meet a friend at the gym or on the corner first thing in the morning, it's easier to achieve your goal when you are accountable for it. You may choose to commit to certain checkpoints and share them with your accountability partner. The accountability partner's role is to check if you have met your commitment and not judge you if you have or have not met that commitment.
   
   Use your colleagues, leader, partner, friends or even coach as an accountability partner. You will be surprised how powerful it is to share your goal with someone and have accountability checkpoints to meet. It is far more powerful than simply stating "one day I'd really like to ...".

Using these five elements you will quickly move from being a goal setter to being a fully-fledged goal getter. While all five elements are equally important, it is imperative that you spend time really getting in touch with your 'Why'. The stronger the 'Why' the more likely and more quickly you will be able to make the goal happen and not be side-tracked by the bright shiny objects




Source:ceoonline.com

Unlocking Talent is a Key to Organizational Agility and Innovation

47
inShare

Nilofer Merchant, in her excellent new book, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era, points out that in order for companies to be fast, nimble and innovative enough to survive in today’s Social Era, leaders must meet their workers’ desire to contribute to a mission that matters.

Published: March 1, 2013 | 2 Comments and 51 Reactions
In: Organization & Culture

Humans have always had innate desires for purpose and connectedness with others. But those desires can now be fulfilled in new ways in today’s hyper-connected world. During the industrial era, workers were content to check their brains at the door, dutifully do the work like a cog in a giant machine and take orders from a handful of managers and leaders. But people have much different expectations today. They want their talents to be appreciated and the opportunity to contribute to the business in a meaningful way. And they’re not hesitant to vote with their feet, gravitating to those organizations that meet those needs.
Companies have always hired based on people’s talent, of course, but it hasn’t been leveraged as well as it could be by many organizations, Merchant says. “While organizations have honored the gem from Jim Collins to get ‘the right people on the bus,’ once those people have been hired, too many organizations often ask them to sit down, shut up, and let someone else drive,” she explains.
That’s because traditionally, a small group of leaders and managers developed the firm’s strategy, while the vast majority were expected to carry it out – often without a clear idea of what the organization’s strategy really was and how they could contribute to it. Merchant cites research by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the founders of the Balanced Scorecard, who say that only 5% of employees understand what their company’s strategy is. Such a dismal percentage may have been tolerable in years past, when change came slowly and there was ample time and manpower to correct course and fix mistakes, but Merchant emphasizes that businesses no longer have that luxury.

When only 5 percent of the people in an organization knows the strategy, then only 5 percent are ready to make decisions that align their work to that vision.

“When only 5 percent of the people in an organization knows the strategy, then only 5 percent are ready to make decisions that align their work to that vision. It means only 5 percent are able to apply themselves to building that strategy into reality. Typically, this means that a part of the organization develops a great idea that is only fully understood in a small corner of that company. The larger organization then gets to work on the execution plan without ever really owning the strategy. While the strategy-execution gap is a persistent bugaboo, it becomes nearly catastrophic in the Social Era: you can’t be fast, fluid, or flexible if 95 percent of the people in your company have no idea what direction they’re supposed to be running toward,” she explains.
All too often, the results are misunderstandings, confusion and misalignment. Merchant says even if the organization’s leader is communicating the company’s mission to its employees, that’s no longer enough. That’s because the rank and file workers don’t “own” the mission enough to be able to make the numerous day-to-day decisions that are required to make change happen. What’s flawed, she says, is that strategy can no longer be separated from execution; the two need to be co-created, so that the strategy is owned throughout the organization.
Impossible, you say? Not so fast. Merchant shares an example of a world-class company that is putting this idea into practice today. Google shares its high-level direction to everyone who works there; it’s posted on an internal website, and is frequently updated (not just in an annual or quarterly strategy session) based upon input from its employees. This enables Google to be fast, innovative and to quickly adapt to changing conditions.
It also sends a critically important message to Google employees: We value your brain. It also sets an important expectation of every employee, too: It’s up to you to figure out how the projects you’re working on fit into the big picture, and to adapt your approach as needed. It becomes the basis of dialogue in nearly every meeting at Google, and a yardstick that everyone can look toward as they build consensus and understanding.
“Understanding unlocks people to recognize what they need to let go of or change to shift from the current ‘here’ to a new ‘there,’” Merchant indicates. The “new there,” of course, is the new products, services and business models that will help to carry the organization into the future. It’s arguably why Google is able to conduct so many experiments, and then decide ideas should get additional funding and support. In short, it enables the search engine giant to move fast and continuously adapt, giving it a nimbleness that helps it to be consistently successful on many fronts.
In addition, Merchant points out another very positive dynamic of this new approach to strategy-making and execution: It enables people to collaborate more fully, instead of staying locked into rigid conceptual boxes that historically defined our positions within the organizational and who owned key resources.
A sense of shared mission, high personal ownership and incentives for cooperating and collaborating can help the organization to move with the power and agility of an Olympic athlete, with all of his or her limbs moving in perfect harmony, rather than a creaky old machine.
But does all of this engagement and collaboration actually have an impact on the bottom line, or is it just an attractive-sounding theory? Merchant cites Gallup research that shows it does have a positive impact on key metrics. This study, which focused only upon the results of high employee engagement, showed that profitability increased an average of 16 percent, productivity up 18%, customer loyalty up 12% and quality, 60%.

Happy workers solve problems over the weekend or in the shower, or wake up at 3 a.m. with breakthrough answers.

“These gains are based just on high employee engagement, the first step on the road from traditional strategy to the talent approach needed in the Social Era,” she points out. “Imagine what happens when direction is fully known, when insights are gathered everywhere and acted on quickly, when ownership is shared, when power is distributed.”
Ultimately, Merchant believes this new approach to strategy has the potential to bring out our best, most creative selves in service of the organizations for which we work and the complex challenges they face.
“If you’ve been lucky enough to lead people when they fully contribute what they have to give, you’ll know that this is when they are also their happiest. This is powerful… Happy workers solve problems over the weekend or in the shower, or wake up at 3 a.m. with breakthrough answers. This is the picture of a Social Era team.”


Source:innovationmanagement.se