Dan Maycock shared this on linkedin and i find it worth reading. Dan Maycock is the author of Building The Expo, which shares best practices on leveraging #Innovation in meaningful ways and saving the concept from its overused but underutilized past. JACK WELCH AND INNOVATION FROM THE GUT If youve spent any time learning about GE, you know it has the reputation for being an extremely Innovative company. It was founded by Thomas Edison, and currently works in 100s of countries around the work with 300some thousand employees involved in everything from train car development, to jet engines. Jack Welch became the CEO in 1981, and was himself an Innovator in how he led the company with the goal of making it the most competitive corporation in the world. To date he has written several books, including Jack Welch: Straight From The Gut, discussing his leadership style and approach towards management. Though no two companies are alike, there are lessons he discusses that can be applied in your own context at your own company as it relates to starting a new concept, getting buy-off internally on a prototype, or trying to drive a certain attitude across your culture. “If you do not take care of your top performers, and if you slice up your pie to give to all equally, your best performers leave. Where does that leave you? It is no longer a growing environment that feeds their needs.” You own the business. You are renting the people. Share your best people across the company”. If youre keeping your top performers in a team all alone, be it an R&D lab, or Innovation workshop, then not only will they most likely eat each other alive but other groups wont be able to gain the expertise and insight that those key individuals have. Consider a rotation program for high performers, with occasional sync ups to help foster best practices throughout the company vs isolating your top talent in a group all on their own. “Control your own Destiny or somebody else will” Its up to you to drive Innovation in your company, and build a track record of success which builds trust and in turn drives greater change in your company. Too many people call themselves thought leaders or Innovators vs letting history bestow the title on them (part of the reason why the word is so overused) but to drive real change takes hard work, some of it going unnoticed for a long time, and its up to you to decide to drive that change and make an impact in your company. If you dont, someone else will, and your destiny will consist of doing the status quo work assignments vs the emerging work thatll shape the company & industry. So think about what it will take to drive meaningful change in your company or industry, and start taking steps towards that. There is no straight line to anyones vision or dream. Its not easy thinking about what it takes to be Innovative, and it wont be a clear plan in front of you. Too many people talk about being Innovative, without doing innovative work, where the real work is after the workshop and the brainstorming. Pushing change outside of a single group, and causing it to scale across a company, and then making disruptive business practices a best practice. This isnt easy work, but its meaningful work, and its the only thing that helps shape the competitive landscape for years to come. If you have a passion to invent, innovative, and drive meaningful change, then dont expect it to come easy but you can make progress towards that vision - it just takes time and effort to get there. If you dont know how to lose, youll never know how to win! Being Innovative isnt about winning the first time, but perhaps failing 100s of times before you finally flex that muscle in just the right way and make a break through. Getting an idea noticed, funded, and launched is a very complex difficult initiative no matter your level in the organization, so consider failure part of the process to learning how to drive change. But differentiation is all about being extreme, rewarding the best and weeding out the ineffective. Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars - and stars build great businesses. Not everyone is meant to be Innovative, and risk adverse. Some folks are great at maintaining an existing program, or perhaps focusing on how to make under performing projects more efficient. The hardest work, the most extreme work, requires very unique talent to help drive Innovative new concepts. So consider who those individuals are and dont feel bad if it means leaving someone else out. It just means theyre better suited for a different role they may be far more happy with once theyre in it. Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on ones sleeve can have the same effect. Calling yourself a thought leader or Innovator or Futurist, even if its true, can work against you more than it can work for you. Let other people bestow such complementary titles on you, and instead be humble and driven around the work in front of you. If youre driving change, people will notice, but giving yourself the title will call people to question whether or not that term is true. Its hard enough driving innovative work in your company, without making it harder on yourself to build trust and commitment from your team. Business has to be fun. For too many people, its just a job The status quo enterprise-level hum drum that exists between 9 to 5 in a cubicle, punching in and out, and causing the excited buzz of a dynamic workplace to turn into a low hum is what every enterprise has going against it. Having Innovation workshops isnt the key, changing the culture and helping drive change and new thinking day in and day out is. If people dont enjoy their job though, good luck getting them motivated to spend their time thinking about how to change their role while still performing the job in front of them. If you have a culture problem, or a motivation problem, itll turn into an attrition problem as social media is driving corporate sentiment for potential recruits now more than ever. Focus on how people can contribute in ways they find meaningful, vs just doing the job in front of them. Getting every employees mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyones best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. Theres nothing more important. This is where real, meaningful, Innovation comes from. Anyone can do a successful and Innovative thing in a group in a single point of time, but how do you continually get new ideas and drive that across the company? Its not hiring consultants to come in and do a 3 day workshop, its having the executive team down to the first line employee committed to doing more than just keeping the lights on. Theres several methods to go about it, some Ive seen work at Fortune 500 companies and others I havent, but it starts with being committed to having a culture of inclusion and Innovation then working from that point on. Be careful not to give it too much lip service, without putting a meaningful plan in place at the same time. Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy. Spending too much time saying youre going to be the #1 most innovative company in the world might be great for marketing purposes, but you need the right people in the right roles to actually drive Innovation in your company. Its not just the product people either, but every dept in your company being committed to driving new ideas into actions that make your company and industry grow exponentially. Everyone has ideas to contribute (whether they know it or not), but sometimes that doesnt translate into the job in front of them. Consider how roles and responsibilities tie to skills and ambitions, and how dynamic of a workforce you have to make sure the right people with the right ideas are driving the right work. I enjoy challenging a persons ideas. No one loves a good and passionately fought argument more than I do. This isnt about being tough-minded and straightforward. Thats the job. But so is sensing when to hug and when to kick. Do you encourage people around you to openly disagree with you? Its amazing but true, that too many initiatives in corporations get initially funded because the idea is only shared with people that always agree with you. If youre in IT, and you avoid the financial or legal people because they always shoot down your ideas, first find out why and second incorporate them early on in the process. Most legal teams dont like to say no, but when you bring them in at the last minute into something fraught with risk and uncertainty, you leave them with few ways to weigh in vs just shooting it all down. I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more — from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people.... If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence. If you want Innovative new ideas, disruptive business practices, and a competitive business model that drives the industry into new stratospheres, think about the work space around you and if it promotes that type of thinking. From the lighting to the color of paint, if people hate being in the office then they wont enjoy collaborating with each other and thinking creatively about the work they do. It could simply be a trip to Ikea, or taking down a couple cubicles for more open work environments, but it can make a big difference. Having a cappuccino bar or free snacks is far cheaper than constantly trying to survive within your industry or get a slump in sales because people arent motivated to do more than they have to, in order to stay employed. Theres never a silver bullet to innovation and every situation is going to be uniquely challenging when it comes to driving change. No matter what your thoughts are on Jack Welch, and his legacy at GE, I hope youre able to take lessons away that you can translate into the work in front of you and drive Innovation in your company that helps reform the overused and underutilized term into something meaningful. All quotes taken from Welch, Jack, and John A. Byrne. Jack: Straight from the Gut. New York: Warner Books, 2001. Print.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 07:13:26 +0000
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