Everything we should be aiming towards boils down to the judgement of a ‘successful execution’ or not.

It is this last, hard five yards of all the work that went into something, which can make or break so much of the efforts that have gone into this emerging ‘commercial life’ of our new innovation activities.

We should regard the back-end of innovation as the rugged part

I love the association of the “fuzzy front end” with ideas, brainstorming and all those creative energies bringing ideas to life, but sadly unless that final ‘rugged terrain’ at the back-end is not travelled we never see the innovation come to life in the market place.

To travel the final ‘rugged terrain’ of innovation execution I believe requires fortitude, stamina, belief, a healthy dose of courage and as much commitment from the whole organization engaged in the innovation process as any ‘front end’ or driving it through the pipeline, yet we often fail to recognize that.

Yet resources seem to be peeled away when we get to the final Execution
Resources get pulled away, repositioned back at the front or in the middle to push others through the pipeline, leaving a dwindling, sometimes scarce resource to push that last five yards.

The R&D group feel their role is complete, the new development team finalize the official ‘hand over’ and the leadership for development and growth begins to get distracted away to push more through the pipeline, taking experienced resources with them. Suddenly it is down to a small team to tackle this execution stage and all it means.

Dealing with many conflicting internal wants and needs is complex
When you get into the final stages you really have to take into account all the individual demands such as “why my country is special”, or “we can’t agree on the final selling price due to a different market (evolution)” or “our major client cycle for approval is not for another six months” or the final design disappoints when you are well passed the discussion stage, all can drive you ‘up the wall’ but need carefully handling. Effective execution gets very complicated and the skill of the project coordinator comes really to the fore.

You can suddenly you become ‘stretched’ in catering to those often conflicting needs if you have not constantly engaged or consulted. If you leave these essential conversations late in the development process as you look around for additional help there seems a lack of clear leadership on who determines final execution, it seems to have gone missing in action.

It becomes tough and complicated to execute well, you sense a feeling of growing exposure and increasing frustrations.The great idea within the product might remain but the execution pains undermine much of the pleasure or sense of satisfaction.

Engage early but be crystal clear on what can be accommodated and what can’t. Get all stakeholders involved but seek the clarity of the ‘red lines’ from the senior person responsible and be prepared to escalate issues up the decision chain for the earliest resolution as you can

So what is needed at the execution end?
There are a number of thoughts here but three big traits stand out for me:

1). An overriding bias for action, irrespective of the challenge, problem or issue to be resolved – don’t let it fester. Take them head-on. Keep the execution pedal flat to the floor, so others understand the sense of commitment and personal passion. Let it become infectious, in a positive way.

2) Really tap into all the knowledge out there in the market place, face the client, sell the product, explain the story, hone that value proposition and keep ‘pivoting’ until you get it right. You unblock the roadblocks, you unlock the mind, and you change the dynamics.

3) No pathway of execution is smooth; it is a rough and rugged road. Recognizing and valuing any breakthrough solutions to move them forward is critical. Forward momentum in any execution plan is essential; as issues come in (and sure they will) you will meet them with a commitment and passion to get them resolved. You offer the ‘waves of support’ to others.

Standing in the deployment zone focused simply on ‘executing away’

Offer true leadership that is leading from the front. Be ready to set and live the expectations; you define the critical deliverables, establish accountability and resolve the conflicts quickly. You influence and install the metrics that are execution specific.

You actively seek commitments from the wider team of stakeholders, vested in a good result. You never forget to share all the news, the good and the bad parts of the progress back into the organization.

You set out clearly to communicate accurately and frequently, keeping on top of issues, break down problems, reaching back into the organization for help when help is needed. You offer true execution leadership, from the front.

Just remember it is only realized when this innovation becomes the buyer’s choice to invest in.

Those known to be good execution people are a valuable resource, they bring the results in and that is highly prized as so few have the resolve or ability to do this.

Organizations are constantly lamenting their lack of implementation capabilities. Go blaze the path as you are actually making and leading the changes. It is how you set about the execution of innovation that will separate you from the pack but it

Remember new innovations replace something of the existing.

Innovation does not stop when it goes out of the organizations doors, it actually only just begins, and it has to prove itself, it needs to justify all the hard work that went into it. It got to here because it was seen as worthwhile, expected to make a contribution.

To make innovation work, it is only when it is in the marketplace – judged by customers sufficiently enough to stump up their cash – that we have a successful innovation.

To get there is often travelling over some rough, tough terrain and the more you are exposed, the more you learn. When you execute you need to deploy a significant skill set and dedicated resource to bring home the results.

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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide-ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, its well worth the visit.

The post The last five yards – the really hard part first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Why does innovation present such a stark choice, often fraught with difficulties for many, yet so simple and successful for the few? Innovation delivery is one of those differentiation points.

Let me suggest here nine points needing your consideration when it comes to thinking through the innovation back end delivery part.

Execution as I have outlined in a previous post is the final rugged frontier– the tough one to truly master as it is so variable in its makeup. Just consider:
Point one: the key to successful innovation is not idea generation or putting all your creative efforts into the front end of innovation, ideas are always plentiful; it is turning this myriad of ideas into market or customer changing outcomes that successfully deliver based on understanding the customer’s needs.

Point two: There are no silver bullets for execution that is simply a fact. For any established business it is striving to perform above known standards. The ability to sustain leadership in the market is not just about the new product but about the execution and delivery of this. Executing well you have to be ruthless as the market is unrelenting, so you must make designated people accountable to meeting or exceeding standards. Normally innovation delivery needs a highly engaged executive involvement. The innovation delivery part cannot be devolved; it has to be well orchestrated.

Point three: Innovation is always swimming in uncertain waters. As uncertainty rises, the value of a well-thought-out strategy actually drops. There are constantly arising critical unknowns and sometimes all you are left with as your innovation emerges is actually a starting point, a launching point that needs rapid understanding and interpretation to build quickly upon, to yet fully capitalise upon in suddenly hitting a ‘rich vein’ of untapped need.

Point four : So you really do have to be ready to adapt, be agile, be ready to experiment, explore and learn, hence why execution is actually the harder end of the innovation process to get right. Everything hangs off a hypothesis, a set of assumptions, a ‘germ’ of an idea and needs to be proven in its delivery. When innovation is at the heart of your strategy, you need to zero in to the best possible execution strategy and constantly review this as successful delivery provides the validation. What you learn has to be feed back fast into the organization so you need to make sure the listening and responding parts are switched on to ‘receive’ this new information.

Point five: Often the lack of a clear formalised decision making process for commercialization and going-to-market is not present. Corporate leadership often leaves this to lower levels to execute, yet those ‘responsible’ struggle due to a lack of fact-based safety nets, managing the levels of uncertainly that innovation has and the often reluctant to seek out leadership engagement to resolve conflicts.

Point six: Far too often senior executives are engaged elsewhere and those left in charge of the execution process lack the courage to make often tough and game changing decisions. This often damages optimal innovation delivery as teams often adopt safety first principles.

Point seven: The ability to move an idea to implementation- with increasing agility– is what will distinguish the successful organization from the less successful. The ability to execute well remains a critical gap of performance. Innovation requires a deeply imbedded set of capabilities. Innovation is high maintenance but also offers high reward.

Point eight: The increasing complexity within markets, the global pressures of consistent breakthrough or disruptive innovation happening consistently all around us is making successful innovation harder.  The increased emphasis on new business models are causing escalating problems as well, changing approaches to market or challenging core offerings that were previously accepted. Complexity at the innovation delivery stage calls also has no different a need for a higher level of getting organized, keeping discipline and executing effectively. Staying alert to the rapid changes occuring daily.

Point nine: Innovation delivery requires having the right capacity in place, at the right time, to drive execution through to its identified end points. Innovation delivery is where many decisions are often muddled through. Market ‘alertness’ and fast reaction times is becoming more crucial than ever. This needs building into your delivery part- adaptive alertness.

The relationship between innovation efforts and their success lies increasingly in understanding the “go-to-market phase- executing the innovation delivery based on understanding clearly the customer and market needs.

Innovation should not be a mystery but it is hard to go from end to end without a real recognition that focused effort on the back end delivery part is a relevant, extremely important part of the innovation process.

That more detailed focus for achieving the return expected from all the total efforts that go into it from that original idea so often pays off and makes a real lasting difference.

The post Mission Critical for Innovation – Final Delivery first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This is the end where the ‘last five yards’ separate the winners from the losers.

The race before then has been made up of often huge quantities of stamina, fortitude, planning, exploration and getting into that necessary innovation rhythm to get yourself within sight of the finishing line, the point when the product, service or business model has one final gasp and passes over that internal finishing line.

The critical passing-through and launch phase where the finished concept goes through that clear defining moment, out into judgement day, where we enter that hostile environment, the marketplace, sometimes too loud cheers, sometimes to defining silence.

Welcome to the real world of judgement where those experienced enough in frontier-ship knows the terrain they are passing over, certainly not for the first time and can manage this again to have a further final successful outcome- better sales!

Hitching your wagons and moving out for the first time.
Discovering any innovation is hard work. What we all want to do is provide something new, an advancement on something that is already there, or it is simply not really innovation.

We search hard for making those breakthrough moments when you hit on that undiscovered ‘unmet need’ and the marketplace just loves it.

Getting to this point you need to recognise all the core needs of making this journey. You need plenty of innovation capabilities to overcome many hitches in the journey of marketplace acceptance. Here are four:

• Innovation execution is not a smooth process, you often have no control over making your innovation activity a steady process, it is full of surprises. It is how you manage these that will determine winners from losers.
• Innovation is serendipitous, full of fortunate discoveries, often you stumble across something that takes it further forward. Often you cannot even replicate that moment. Other times it is simply elusive until by accident and through patience, you get there. You resolve the obstacle, you overcome the objection, and you move on.
• Often innovation is often less than spectacular. You get to the moment of rolling drums and voila, whipping back the covers you cry “there you have it!” You offer something less than spectacular, it is so boringly such a ‘duh’ moment, you are ready to crawl back under the rock.
• Your innovation execution lacks momentum. Even with lots of initial enthusiasm and best intentions, suddenly all that necessary energy dissipates and falls away. What started as a bang ended with a whimper and a desperate need to finish this off and move on to the next thing.

Why is this?

What separates successful execution innovators from the rest of the pack?

Innovation needs to be a clear discipline; there really is no getting away from it. Innovation needs to be integrated from idea to execution, to full end-market delivery.

It often boils down to discrete and manageable tasks well managed, well orchestrated and planned, well supported with all the best resources available to make a success of innovations implementation.

Execution, that final all-important phase needs leadership. Leadership sets the tone and communication of what is important and is always ready and able to help the implementation team succeed as best they can.

These leaders need three traits- 1) a bias for action irrespective of the problem, 2) knowledge and contacts in the marketplace themselves to gauge quickly issues and roadblocks,3) they incentivise the execution team for providing breakthrough solutions and moving them forward quickly.

How many times though does leadership seem to slip away at the moment of execution? They feel the hard ‘yards’ have already been covered, the innovation is ready to go and they commit a series of execution sins.

They extract critical resources at the wrong time and work them back into the organization far too early. The research group have moved on, the product manager has been re-assigned, the research didn’t cover that last concept change to check its value in the market, the final packaging design was subjected to last-minute economies and runs the risk of compromising the final delivery of the product. This sin list could run on and on, you know these as they constantly happen.

The leadership had the pedal pressed to the floor so hard to get the product ready for launch, they just took their foot off this pedal at the crucial moment and the product goes ‘sliding’ out the door and simply crashes into that first formidable barrier, customer rejection and you were not ready for it. So much becomes “at-risk” if you have not given the right execution focus.

Leadership needs to be immersed in the deployment zone
Leadership needs to be as much in their ‘deployment zone’ as the team assigned the job.

They set and live the expectations, they define the critical deliverables, establish accountability and resolve the conflicts quickly, they install metrics that are execution specific, they actively seek commitments from the team, share in achieving them from their customers and they share the good and bad parts of the progress back into the organization.

They communicate accurately and frequently, keeping on top of issues, breaking down problems, and reaching back into the organization for help when help is needed. They offer true leadership, from the front.

Execution through this commitment has become mission-critical and all need to see this. It becomes, over time, the force for perpetual execution. Inertia is not spoken of ever!

The sustaining execution machine

Four attributes that need constantly developing well at the execution stage

• Agility – that ability to simply move quickly and be adaptable. To grasp the problem, move on it and constantly explore all the different angles that will resolve the issue and keep execution plans on track.
• Seek healthy debate – asking, probing, and showing a constant interest in what is going on, what resolved any issues, simply having that cultural bias of ‘qualified’ risk-taking and openness, discussing and learning so you are building up always knowledge and experience.
• Effective communication– ensuring there are the mechanisms in place to ‘flag’, to help, to reach out and ask for help. Use communication not to hide issues but to seek out other ways to break down the barriers.
• Provide appropriate resources – the need to provide the same energy and resource commitment, skills and experience that went into the discovery and development of innovation and ensure equal ‘vested’ interest from all is there in achieving the concept aims at the execution time; at the moment of customer experience. Gather the resources quickly, learn fast if it doesn’t and work to find solutions that can resolve it, so it does.

The five phases of execution adventure – just keep those wagons rolling!
The ‘innovation execution emotional wave’ makes it hard ground to travel.

I was reading recently about Gartner’s hype cycle, and one article written by Graham Horton gave me a thought for this piece. The hype cycle was developed to visualise the media coverage of new technology and it goes through five distinct phases.

Actually, I really think one version of this applies, with adaptation (and due acknowledgement to them) for the ongoing journey we often face in the execution of a product once it has entered the marketplace- that hostile terrain I spoke about. We go through a real ’emotional wave’ of innovation execution.

• Trigger:  in this case is our execution or launch. When the product is launched and comes up against customer comment, reaction and acceptance/ rejection
• Inflated expectations: the over-enthusiasm and expectations of the innovation meet the reality of the market place.
• Disillusionment: Either the innovation fails to make the changes it was expected so the company needs to begin a rapid re-think or the market response has been less than overwhelmed. Enthusiasm diminishes rapidly and action needs to be taken
• Enlightenment: The innovation on hand begins to be understood, to be adopted, to be adapted and fits within the needs of the final consumer. Sometimes this comes from heavy advertising, repackaging, repositioning or simply listening to the issues and rapidly making the necessary adjustments to match needs
• Productivity: The adjustments have been resolved, the peaks and troughs have been worked through, and it becomes appropriate to the customers’ needs. This might have needed second and third generation modification and upgrade but it does the job it was conceived to do.

Bringing the innovation execution wagon train home is hard.
I do think new products and services do go through this ‘emotional execution wave’. Execution is hard; it is not simply the ‘last five yards’ it goes well beyond the internal finishing line. Innovation does not stop when it goes out of the organization’s doors, it actually only just begins, and it has to prove itself.

To make innovation work, it is only when it is in the marketplace, judged by customers sufficiently enough to stump up their cash we have a successful innovation. To get there is often travelling over some rough, tough terrain and the more you are exposed, the more you learn. When you execute you need to deploy a significant skill set and dedicated resource to bring home the results.

Fuzzy front ends, huh! Markets have these tasty morsels for breakfast if they, firstly, have not listened to the market needs in the first place but more importantly, have not been executed correctly.

The back end, execution, is certainly rugged terrain, that final frontier to travel that is for sure.

The post The rugged final frontier of innovation – Execution. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.