It often challenges the status quo and can on certain occasions, potentially challenge the stated strategic goals as those ‘disruptive forces’ have not been addressed radically enough. Innovation often “asks” difficult questions of ourselves.

We keep asking a lot of innovators but consistently restrain them or starve them of essential resources, at the critical times they need them. We seem to get in the way of blocking innovation so it can’t be seen to align with the goals or vision of the organization.

We keep extorting innovators to raise their game, constantly trying to shape their work so it can fit. We are constantly encouraging innovators to abandon their personal judgments, open themselves up to different possibilities to try and make it “fit” with what we have got or already invested into.

We ask innovators to keep resolute and keep trying, keep pushing the boundaries, challenging and sometimes disrupting the established practices and processes, organizations like to keep in place but this is a very ‘uneasy’ and needs courage, belief but most of all alignment. Innovators need to feel confident they are fully supported and encouraged. They need empowering.

The innovator is constantly dealing with ambiguity, managing a far more dynamic process of knowledge learning and investigating. Often this is in direct conflict or tension with the majority of the organizations need to extract the most efficiencies and effectiveness out of the established systems and processes.

Strategic design often does not single out innovation as different, it expects it to comply. It is this lack of recognition that causes much of the misalignment, as it does not conform to the norm.

Yet strategy and innovation have much in common. They are both dealing with uncertainties, attempting to quantify uncertainties and unknowns, working towards a future state that advances the business by identifying and capturing new opportunities.

This is where cascading helps with alignment- consider a model

To achieve alignment, a cascade of better choices is needed that keeps mapping back to innovation activities and strategic need.

This calls for the need for a choice-cascade model where understanding flows through aligned cascading choices. Its aim is to empower firstly, by promoting and encouraging different levels of sound or best judgment, to enable individual choices, so as to allow for a ‘choice-maker’ to push this back upstream. Roger Martin and Hilary Austen have suggested “the art of integrative thinking”.

Choice options cascade down from the higher-order choices. These should set the context for and constrain (help in defining) lower-order choices.

Choices become inter-related and need to fit context and constraints from this higher-level. If there is difficulty in the fit, then the higher order needs urgently revisiting, hence the cascading effect is a constant, dynamic two-way flow.

Today, if we recognize change is a constant, flowing and rapidly changing part of how we do business, by having in place this choice cascading model you can unfreeze part of a strategy that is not ‘aligning’ with a changing world. It makes the decision-making process more dynamic and allows for greater contribution to strategic choices and the innovation process can equally respond and align on a far quicker, adaptive path.

Choice-cascade needs structure and operating principles

Choice makers within this model need to be explicit in the why:

1. Explain the choice that has been made and the explicit rationale behind it
2. Explicitly identify the next downstream choice to make it a joint venture
3. Assist in making the downstream choice happen explicitly
4. Commit to revisiting and modifying the choice based on explicit downstream feedback

To move towards choices that can outline desired outcomes and describe ways and means to achieve them allows for this alignment and flow of understanding.

A cascade must move in both directions

Water flows down but it is the  ‘pushing back’ provides this feedback cascade, where the real fate of change and realization resides is in recognition and ongoing dialogues. To cascade back, clarity or questioning needs a mechanism or process to return to the top. You gain alignment through this method of cascading both up and down organizations in deliberate ways. We are seeking this alignment constantly, it is the lightning rod that transmits the energy to gain fusion.

To encourage alignment, they need to be explicitly linked to key desired behaviors, determined by the needs of the individual organization. Alignment needs to equally map back to a high consistency in core values expected in practicing, as important. I would suggest a good innovation governance design significantly helps this. This is where building the innovation culture, the environment it works within and the climate that is encouraged prompts the dialogue, conversation, and engagement.

Underpinning this alignment within the Cascade’s design and identification, you equally build a ‘belief’ audit. Its aim is to uncover where alignment is achieved, misunderstood and equally highlights where it needs a better bridging mechanism and most importantly, where there is critical misalignment to be addressed at a higher level. This belief audit strengthens the choice-cascade model as it opens up the dialogue surrounding innovation and its strategic (or operational only) alignment.

How can innovation get squared away with strategy?

As I mentioned earlier it is getting innovation into this ‘choice mentality’ on where to play and what seems to be the real wins by providing as much understanding of the judgment of why it contributes to the strategic goals. You align it or ‘flag’ it. To get innovation to align you need to discuss a whole array of gaps. It needs dialogues, engagement and a clear, cohesive set of ‘shared’ objectives of what innovation can make a contribution and deliver a difference.

Clearly, if you lack this deep understanding of how the organization’s strategy was brought together, the thinking behind it, then innovation will often fall short in delivery, as it can’t have enough of the understanding to be aligned. Making hard choices is tied to aspirations of knowing where you want to place your bets, to win.

Often it is within the strategies lies the potential new spaces to play. Strategy informs innovation. It becomes the catalyst of where-to-play and how-to-win and with this, you are giving innovators a better chance to deliver back concepts for those hard choices to be made, designed around innovate concepts that align and feeds the strategic design with winning designs

Having a cascading model in place allows that essential ‘flow’ that connects innovation to strategy but more importantly becomes the connecting point for all within the organization to identify with and…..align too.

Contact me if you would like to learn more.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

The post Innovation has a hard job to align first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

For me, the bedrock of innovation is built upon competencies, capabilities, and capacities and all these involve people as well as technology. They go hand in hand in our connected world.

Building these is the core of my own innovation offering in consulting, in advising, mentoring and coaching. My work constantly “maps” back to this essential three “C” of competencies, capabilities, and capacities.

Let me offer some thoughts that build around a framework I work through.

I often break my explanations down on this building core competency into eight parts.

We have two levels to it. The first (or higher level) is the need for a 1) Unifying framework, 2) to gain alignment and this needs two essential aspects to be well-clarified. We need to establish 3) a working blueprint and a clear understanding of 4) the business focus orientation for innovation to reside in.

The outcomes of this top-tier framing then we can begin to construct the underlying level of 5) well-designed competencies that need to be pursued, we need to move the organization or the innovation activities into ones that are seeking out this constant alignment and this needs building 6) critical behaviours, a seeking out of 7) motivators and finally, 8) the dependencies we must have to map back and advance our core and build our innovation competencies upon.

Let me explain these a little more, they tie together.

• The Unifying framework needed. Competencies that are going to be built need to fit the core design and aspirations of the organization. These are strategically defined and combine organizational goals and individuals development. Knowing the vision, direction and intent of the organization will enable innovation to be designed top work with these. I believe there are different innovation types as pathways to pursue. A dedicated site has been put together to understand the potentially different innovation types (in collaboration with  Jeffrey Phillips over at Ovo Innovation).It can be found at http://cirf.pbworks.com and explores the necessary business architecture, provides a detailed innovation reference framework and examines the different innovation types through a unique lens. Each innovation lens builds upon different capabilities and competencies needed. We also do need a common language of success and innovation’s contribution to this and again in a collaboration with Ovo, we designed the Innovation Executive Work Mat (initial whitepaper) as the overarching need to have in place. The whole point of both of these thinking through positions was to raise the bar of understanding around ‘different’ innovation, create this better fit and strive towards this alignment strategically and operationally. The net effect is it does prompt a greater desire, clarity of purpose, identification, and fit, required at the senior management level and in general for innovation management construction.

• Gaining Alignment. Alignment is one of the hardest tasks, especially in large organizations. There is the need to address the corporate alignment, the granularity that always occurs in specific goals and tasks. Having a clear, well- articulated strategic innovation document, one of the outcomes of working through the Executive Work Mat frame you can address the multiple points of identification. You can determine the competencies required of everyone for innovation to be more within the core of the organization as well as you can address those that are specific. The approaches taken to alignment must continue to map back to 1) the business strategy, 2) vision and missions, 3) the innovation needs and 4) the pathway development that is taken to achieve this alignment.

• The Working Blueprint. My approach to blueprints might be different to others. It needs to have established the key dependency decisions, the honest assessment of the key aspects in the likelihood of success by determining the milestones to identify and move towards, the critical spotting of the gaps in critical competencies that are present today. I have built and continue to develop my thinking here through a dedicated website for what I call the innovation fitness dynamics, taking a structured approach to the development. This is a journey towards innovation fitness; it is dynamic and has nine stages to work through. This is a long journey of exploration and experimenting. This approach lays out a process to manage the development of the capabilities and competencies needed. The blueprint is staged and planned, dependent on the overarching strategic approach to innovation

• The Business Focus Orientation. I look at four aspects here a) is it competitive b) Is it well-structured and designed c) Is it highly entrepreneurial in its design and execution and finally, d) Is it built on a collaborative basis
  • Competitive needs to think through the action orientation, the business acumen that is needed, the customer engagement intent and the result focus outcomes expected.
  • The well-structured part is the decision-making process, the level of (dedicated) project management, how much is self-managed in learning, what level of supervisory skills and the design of a talent management approach.
  • The entrepreneurial skill set is how much agility, flexibility, change, risk taking, new knowledge, and expertise is gained and then applied to solutions pursued, that builds confidence.
  • Then in the collaborative part it is the levels of collaborations achieved, in the manner of communication and relationship building, the ability to manage conflict management, the development leadership applied and the interpersonal effectiveness by leading and influencing others in the pursuit of innovation solutions.

Then we set about a detailed structuring of what constitutes the core competencies

5. The Well-designed competencies that emerge due to the working through the above. These can then be described by knowing the knowledge and skills required. By building these to reflect novel and complex situations and innovation is often most certainly both you can begin to build a “sticky” competence set that will remain relevant even if content knowledge changes as it continues to align to the above. The importance of clarity in performance levels, expectations and the understanding of a constant improving metric build this competency framing up. The whole ethos is to seek out deeper learning experiences and having exposure on knowing where to apply these in meeting different challenges and opportunities. The ongoing dialogue builds from this dynamic learning approach to understanding how performance can become better by practice and learning objective. I very much like to use the absorptive capacity framework for this knowledge learning journey.

5. Critical behaviors. It is seeking and identifying those positive behaviors that advance innovation. These need to be at individual, team and organization levels. Again it is a learning journey, of experimenting, clarifying and then embedding ones that work. These need to be recognized as constantly fluid, adaptive and agile. Constantly asking what enhances perform at each of the three levels, what gives impact and movement and can be measured, adopted, seen and valued by others.

5. Seeking out the motivators. Innovation is tough as much of it remains unclear, in plain sight and needs to be realized. The whole motivation effect works on being observable, measurable and clear. The constant revisiting ‘intent and purpose’ gives identification, we need to shift to ultimate outcomes. Basic motivations rise as identification with an achievement orientation, exploring the prevailing attitudes, values and self-concepts become the well-seen framework to be judged against, where achievement orientation prevails and is recognized.

5. Finally building all the dependencies. Taking an open stance to innovation, its discovery, investigation, its progression in its different stages from concepts to prototypes, to final outcomes and commercialization requires a real ‘network effect’ of collaborators. Today we recognize that we need to have an externally focused outlook to learning, (relating to the actual world, outside-in) seeking expertise, open up to diversity and specialization as well as knowing where the leveraging points are within the internally focused needs (of our world, inside-out) of who does what, who can influence, support, decide and become more engaged and involved. Dependencies are highly dynamic and fluid. It is tapping into creativity, seeking out opinion and expertise and feeling a growing level of freedom. We need to work on the four parts here a) critical thinking b) complex problem solving, c) judgment and decision-making and d) active engagement and learning. We need to fill all the gaps

In summary.

Innovation needs to be dynamic; it cannot survive in a static environment, it needs to search out opportunities and quickly capitalize on these. The routines we build to support these dynamic environments equally need to be infused with this dynamic tendency. Asking constantly about our routines what has the potential to be far more evolutionary in nature, differentiating, critically enabling and supporting.

Innovation does need to be linked to a clear sense of purpose. The need to build the innovation capital comes from pulling together our intangible assets and most of these are learning capitals that our people, their relationships and the leveraging of the structural capitals give us the foundation for value identification, creation, and realization. Knowing how to set about the building of core competencies, building capacity and capabilities is critical to design in any innovation endeavor, or simply to thrive and grow. Setting about their design becomes critical. This provides a “snapshot” in my thinking and structuring core competencies needed in innovation designs.

So these are just my closing innovation thoughts of 2016. I wish you a highly successful innovating 2017 ahead of us all.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

The post Building the Core Competencies for Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

So what does block innovation? Arguably there are plenty of things up and down organizations: a lack of resources, an overcrowded portfolio of ideas, a lack of dedicated people, treating innovation as one off, keeping it isolated and apart from mainstream activities. The list could go on and on, no question.

Let’s take a different perspective.
If you could ask those that lead innovation, your senior organizational leadership, a series of question that might help unlock innovation blockages would that be valuable? This would need a good external facilitator as my recommendation who has deep innovation knowledge and expertise, able to manage the ‘dynamics’ within the room.

What would happen if you could get the leadership in a room together to discuss innovation which would allow innovation dialogues to emerge? Perhaps allowing those conversations that begin to build a common understanding, a common language for innovation?

Different views can surface for the challenges but they all need addressing. Gaining a working consensus to share across the organization so these blockages can be openly discussed and in time resolved.

That chance to surface different views and then map those into an emerging consensus as they start to address the hidden barriers and often personal blockages or misunderstanding that can occur.

As part of the Executive Innovation Work Mat methodology you need to find the dedicated time to allow a ‘robust’ conversation to occur within the leadership team to bring out the possible barriers and viewpoints.

I’d suggest these might be a great starting point, tough to manage but phenomenal to address through a clear leadership dialogue.

The ten innovation intractable challenges- surfacing real barriers to innovation.

Addressing the issue of unfamiliar responsibilities – new and different ways of working, of understanding, of allowing innovation to take hold and flourish is often demanding new ways of responding, often adding to increasing responsibilities. This needs surfacing.

Many holding leadership positions in our organizations are uncomfortable with innovation, it is too intangible, it was not something they worked upon, it often seems to ‘sit’ outside the normal processes and structures. It is full of risk and uncertainly.

Innovation demands new directions – making significant changes to the way the organization is run is very challenging, potentially disrupting and needs thinking through at the top level well.

To ‘hone’ an organization into a lean efficient and effective ‘machine’ is one thing, to allow diversity and conflicting signals to pervade and challenge this is extremely uncomfortable territory, so ring fencing this keeps it at bay! Is this the right solution, are we facing different times to manage our organizations in 20th century practices.

Inherited problems always surface – addressing countless and inherent problems is messy and requires dedicated resolution. Changing a culture to become more innovative can be a massive step in structure, organization and policies. How do we manage such a revolution, what is needed, what is a culture and environment for innovation anyway?

Problems within the organizations make up – inadequate experience and resistance to change especially surface when a person is not equipped to deal with it. Installing innovation capacity, capabilities and competencies needs figuring out. How long does this take, where can we turn too?

High stakes of innovation – demanding breakthrough innovation makes everyone feel increasing vulnerable, increasingly visible and leadership has a real responsibility to manage this risk and set of fears. They need to be ready to ‘positively react and encourage’ both in supporting winning solutions and extracting positive learning from failures.Can you run breakthroughs alongside incremental innovation activities, what is really different in how we manage these?

Scope and scale of innovation – Managing in scale and scope is demanding and requires well thought through systems and processes. To scope innovation needs robust business case approaches, its flexibility in its management and then to scale this up requires well established approaches and clear commitments to its engagement and execution. Are we really good at seizing ‘breaking’ opportunities and quickly scaling these up. Can we learn new approaches to this.

External pressures multiply – everyone has an opinion outside the organization, let alone inside. Balancing these different interfaces and the pressures from these as you explore innovation needs managing well. Avoid that trait of just keeping on the raising of expectations and failing to back this up by not actively work at this alignment. What does it take for the ability to deliver on the promise?

Influencing without full authority – key activities within innovation usually demand that you become reliant on others. You need to spend (seemingly) inordinate time explaining and gaining others buy in and their own identification with concepts so as to move emerging innovation concepts along the pipeline.

You need to find often imaginative ways of attracting across the resources needed. This is especially hard for senior managers to adapt too, the need to attract across, instead of simply expect, demand and simply take. How can we learn new ways or different ways where collaboration becomes the norm and we can learn to borrow and exchange resources across functions more freely?

Work more with a listening and feedback culture – this can be totally different from the way business has been conducted today, through a more hierarchical structure. Flattening organizations to allow greater two way flow sucks up time; it simply undoes or unpicks command and control over time. It takes time to establish and gain the confidence and momentum. You need to allow more for debate, it shifts and alters the hierarchy and structures and that is a big step into an unknown, yet it is necessary for organization change, to allow innovation to truly flourish on a more sustaining basis. What needs to be put into place to listen and respond to our organizations and customers’ needs?

The need to develop work group diversity – innovation asks for more diversity in opinion, it draws out more in thinking, in discipline, in alternative approaches and solution. This often leaves senior executives feeling they are less in control, reliant on other and that can feel scary and surface their own insecurities, buried increasingly as they moved up the organization and took on responsibility and accountability.

It challenges often their very notion of management as they have known and experienced it. Innovation in its management challenges many past notions of managing. How can we encourage a greater diversity of thought, of working, of judging performance that would help our organization’s absorption of different knowledge and approaches occurring all around us?

To summarize
Each of these ten innovation challenges needs to be surfaced at the right time, usually as early as you can, within any innovation executive work mat discussion. Each one of these ‘intractable’ points can individually block innovation from advancing – we must find ways to bring them out, to surface opinions and find common solutions to resolving them.

We need to build these into a common understanding to move innovation forward. To send out a compelling message into our organizations we are wanting to tackle these intractable’s to give innovation its rightful place within all our thinking and activities.

Finding that right moment is not easy to draw these out but it is certainly necessary, otherwise those (often) hidden barriers never come to the surface and get resolved, leaving innovation trapped unable to release its true voice and significant worth and value to the organization’s fortunes.

** The original list of the ten innovation intractable’s has been adapted from “creating learning experiences without changing jobs” by Cynthia McCauley at the CCL in 2006. I’ve applied it in a way for surfacing innovation issues and personal concerns at executive and senior organization level that need their resolution.

The post Surfacing ten great intractable’s for innovation’s resolution first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

If you ever look at high performance in sport it is in the consistent, hour-upon-hour, day-upon-day of dedicated practice, hard work and consistent honing that gets you to that performance point. You seek to reduce deviance; you look to achieve a certain consistency.

Business Organizations will like that approach, it ‘plays’ to the efficiency and effectiveness message, it offers up predictability and reliability that allows for dedicated planning and ‘predicting’ solid performance and certainly. This is ideal for those investors looking for consistency in results and dividends and the Executive Board yearns for.

Today uncertainly asks for a different performance

Today, we face a different type of performance – one that is not ‘just’ dependable but one that is often unpredictable, one that seems perhaps more suited to innovation that outsmarts others in unique ways.

We need to be predictable in performance but we need to deliver unpredictable innovation that wows our customers and the markets to achieve this. To do this you have to run today’s organizations faster, better, in more active and engaged ways to extract the best from it but to allow it to exploit options consistently and with clear purpose.

This engagement needs a different honing than most organizations are certainly not capable of delivering, without thinking long and hard about the way they must undertake a more transformational pathway. One that can connect and deliver a consistent and coherent innovating performance across the organization.

With so much around us, of unprecedented levels of disruption and uncertainly, unrelenting competitive pressure, fickle markets and customers, it creates either a ‘freezing at the top’, a paralysis-effect focusing just on short-term incremental measures or the “going for it” with huge ‘big bets’ that risk losing the whole farm. There must be better ways to manage in these times of uncertainty without having to choose one end of the spectrum or the other?

Managing innovation well is this middle way.

Innovation requires careful managing. I like to put the emphasis of innovation behind both efficiency in innovation and effectiveness in innovation. Innovation may never be simply predictable but it can be well-managed, to extract and leverage its best performance but to achieve this it needs a highly focused top management engagement. Often we are not seeing this in many organizations today.

You simply can’t delegate innovation down the organization. Innovation needs to be as aligned, as honed to strategy, to extracting from its available resources as anything else in organizations. It needs connecting, it needs articulating, it needs framing, it needs cascading throughout the organization.

We need to cascade innovation down the organization.

I believe there is an essential gap within the way we set about innovation today. There is a need for a well-articulated and well-communicated innovation strategy that can be delivered in an organizing framework that has been called the Executive Innovation Work Mat. Over a series of articles and blog posts I have laid out the Value Proposition for this.

In obtaining the right innovation engagement at the top of our organizations, well communicated throughout the entire company, we reduce distance and bridge many current disconnects surrounding innovation. We consistently raise performance.

Triggering the cascade-effect is seeking out broad adoption.

How do we achieve firstly, a change in performance that is both rapid but also one that works on consistently looking for improving performance over the longer-term? We need to think ‘velocity’ not only down organizations; we need to encourage this sense of movement in multiple directions, flowing back up organizations in knowledge and understanding with the ‘result’ of going out performing in greater successful innovations, time and again.

I’ve previously written on the cascading effect needed for innovation success looking at two-way flows and the value of closer alignment.

I want to go one step further in THREE VISUAL CASCADING steps

We need to achieve alignment, all sorts of alignment. We need to convey throughout the organization and encourage a closer alignment on not just what to do but also to support the how to do it as well as the where to do it.

We need to leverage across the entire ecosystem that makes up the organizations place where we consciously work on immediate impact points in this year’s innovation outcomes but also what is going to give us this longer-term transformational effect.

This requires a huge emphasis on collaborative efforts, on promoting behaviours and matching understanding within a greater transparent organization climate and culture.

We need to find more fluid and flexible organizations that respond through searching for innovation consistency. They need to have a ‘flow’ of knowledge, of clarity, of a sense of scale in their learning and dialogues that promotes greater successful innovation outcomes as the sense of on-going mission.

We need to align, offer clear vision and purpose and this needs orchestrating from the top of the organization to the bottom. Organizations need an integrated innovation strategic framework that can deliver commonality in understanding, in purpose, in language. We need to cascade.

What we are looking for is a cascade of better choices to achieve the desired innovation outcomes that only an integrated innovation design can achieve. This is where the engagement from the top of the organization becomes pivotal. They ‘frame’ the design; they offer the alignment and integrated approach I believe the Executive Innovation Work Mat methodology can provide.

The work mats aim is to engage the top of our organizations to lay out the conditions and result impact they expected from innovation. Then it needs to be cascaded throughout the organization.

Through this cascading-effect you move closer to better choices that can get so much closer to the desired innovation outcomes all involved want to seek out.

A performance that reflects a team’s or organizations best efforts to be best at what they do; the outstanding innovation performance consistent to the needs and growth expectations demanded in today’s constantly changing world.

Where consistency needs to be fluid, flexible, aligned and agile in innovation – that’s the new target performance standard needed.

The post A Cascade of Better Choices for Greater Innovation Outcomes first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Not just in researching it, in debating it but in eventually constructing a sound framework, that is visual, easy to connect too and for hopefully many to become involved and engaged with, brings this work together into a realization that is really rewarding.

For Jeffrey Phillips and me, we believe we are offering something that makes sense through our framework, which we call the Executive Innovation Work Mat, with a link to the short introductory series, published in September 2012.

In our initial White Paper there is the outlines of our thinking behind this Executive Innovation Work Mat.  The important message is that we want to deliver the message into the boardrooms of as many business organizations as we can, with this message of intent which can be simply summed up as:

“we believe we have a framework that will help the leadership of organizations to identify with, understand their role in this and in this strategic participation and framing innovation intent, so advance the contribution of innovation within their organizations and beyond.”

Let me lay out the overarching proposition for this.

We believe there is an essential gap within the way we set about innovation today. There is a need for a well-articulated and well-communicated innovation strategy that can be delivered in an organizing framework that we have called the Executive Innovation Work Mat.

The work mats aim is to engage the top of our organizations to lay out the conditions and result impact they expected from innovation.

This framework provides the guidance through its seven innovation domains that combine to move towards an explicit innovation strategy, that is looking to align far more to the organization’s growth goals and strategic intent than most organizations deem to achieve today.

In obtaining the right innovation engagement at the top of our organizations, well communicated, we reduce distance and bridge many current disconnects surrounding innovation.

The end result is we gain identification and we believe improve organizational responsiveness through this involvement. It can deliver the essential alignment that innovation requires to support an organizations strategy and goals.

The framework provides both formal and informal mechanisms, it combine the intrinsic with the extrinsic, so as to make up a more effective way for decision-making and creating innovation to take place. This combination effect provides the necessary support to the efforts involved in discovering, exploring and executing innovation and a significant contributor to the strategic and tactical linkage needed within the organization.

In summary let me articulate the potential this work mat can offer:

Key implications
Innovation is not an isolated event; it is not made up of islands of knowledge. Innovation requires a “pulling together” and needs this overarching organizing framework, that provides the deep, enduring commitment to its constituent parts from the top of organizations in the support and the understanding required to make this happen. The framework provides the innovation leadership, it lays out the “conditions”  for innovation through the work mat methodology.

The leadership have the underlying responsibility to establish it, leverage it and effectively work it fully through, using this framework as the mechanism for sustaining the innovation focus in a well-structured way.

This gains a real organizational value as it provides the top-level understanding of the seven essential domains needed to support innovation that covers the structure, design and process, governance, motivation and metrics and the conditions to strengthen the climate and environment to bring this to life.

Points of emphasis
This framework provides a uniforming and growing cohesion required for innovation to be focused, it seeks greater alignment in activities and engagement around innovation; it actively works at reducing barriers and many of today’s uncertainties through its constant engagement, communication and dialogues prompted by its construct.

The framework becomes the document of the leaderships commitment and engagement, it raises innovations visibility in a structured thoughtful way, it seeks to encourage and draw in the organization for them to gather around.

Eventually we can see this framework becoming a sort of innovation mechanism for the “collecting house in meaningful exchange on innovation” where the essential strategic activities are captured and where the actions can be recognized, measured and valued. It triggers engagement and provides the motivations to delve even deeper into generating greater innovation outcomes as the end result around its framing ability.

The essential Common Language
Eventually, it forms a significant part of the required innovation ecosystem. A place where a common language forms, a clear explicit place where context connects with the work going on and the value of this is how the people involved in innovation work, connect and engage.

A dream, no, it can be a reality. We need to provide increasing clarity and purpose to each persons daily work, to their innovation activities, so all draw meaning and value from the connections across the framework, they recognize the boundaries and push beyond in confidence, not fear. They need the appropriate “signal” and guidance from the top to gain encouragement to push the boundaries of potential but set within this overarching frame.

Risk is identified through dialogue and governance on what any actions mean and the understanding of these for any impact, negative or positive, on our innovation ecology can be evaluated. This pushes innovation beyond the normal incremental approach often found today, as leaders become more aware and can “frame” issues and understand opportunities better through their strategic lens.

Achievement Goals
The leader’s role is to provide guidance, strategic and sometimes tactical guidance, as well as to offer inspiration and clarity of purpose. They need to “draw out” the essence of an organization’s desire to innovation. By both articulating and nurturing innovation through this framework then innovation is driven and directed, then surely we are headed in the right direction.

An organizational framework for innovation draws people in, it achieves connection and engagement. If innovation can “resonate” throughout the organization it gains the “required attention”. It becomes embedded as the “force” essential for growth and over time part of our “natural”  daily occurrence.

Motivation to innovate
We need to cultivate innovation. It is the primary source of new wealth creation, of sustaining a healthy future, of securing that future.
Each of us needs to personally understand how innovation happens, what are the ‘multiple’ connecting points, all the intersections and cross-over points needed to make it work, and work well repeatedly. Innovation cannot be delegated, it needs to be mastered, it needs to be shared.

We all need to become “innovating conscious”. Everyone needs to “get it” not just a few selected people today.

Shared understanding and consistent follow-up
What the executive team does, in what it communicates in its actions and behaviours, in its participation and its resource funding of innovation, becomes vital. Innovation runs counter to many of the existing (accepted) processes and faces stronger “headwinds” and resistance because it challenges many of the existing practices and processes honed and established over many years. It needs executive leadership to manage these tensions and dynamics. To show innovation leadership.

This framework becomes the “glue” that connects across the seven domains essential to innovation and re-enforce a consistent need to challenge, overcome yet equally maintain performance.

Changing Behaviors

People make or break innovation. Innovation is an inherently social activity that needs relationships, networks, structures and supporting systems. People need to belong, belong in an environment that nurtures and encourages innovation, in a community that balances risk and learning, a place to generate and execute. A place to experiment and learn.

From the top to the bottom of the organization requires active engagement, growing identification and understanding and knowing that the skills, exposure to competencies and building capabilities is an ongoing process that feeds off a climate of trust, mutual respect and ever-evolving partnerships to achieve the work that is needed can be done.

Real Value Points
For engagement in the Executive Innovation Framework, the work invested in this work mat exercise offers as real value benefits:

1. The framework can create cohesion and consistency of innovation purpose that will reduce many existing barriers and uncertainties around innovation
2. As the leadership does become engaged this will demonstrate a significant commitment and promise that will certainly increases the visibility of innovation, lowers risks, encourages more involvement and generation of better ideas.
3. The framework itself will generate work flows that link, become more dynamic to explore and promote the innovation skills, capabilities and competencies needed. They become more cohesive, coordinated and focused. It seeks to reduce tension and increase the dynamics within innovation.
4. As the framework connects, in its understanding and as its impact grows, we certainly believe, confidence builds. Both formal and informal areas are addressed in parallel, growing all-round identification and alignment.
5. You begin to align compensation and incentives into your abilities to generate the innovation activities that provide the impact the organization is looking for.

While CEOs or other senior leaders responsible for innovation they don’t need to dominate innovation activities but they do need to fill this critical role to ensure:

• linking of innovation activities to corporate strategies,
• communicating the importance of innovation consistently and demonstrating their personal engagement,
• aligning the corporate culture and compensation programs to innovation goals and activities
• creating innovation governance frameworks and providing the environment to allow innovation to function and thrive.

The essential role that leadership plays in innovation
While few executives will conceive the ideas that become best-selling products and services, executives must orchestrate and lead the rest of the organization, in building a culture that embraces innovation and provide the leadership and guidance innovation demands.

Leadership is certainly seeking more innovation in their business models, more distinctiveness in their innovation offerings, a wish to explore different options. To meet this, they need to become more involved in all aspects of innovation to achieve this innovation improvement and reduce uncertainties that lies often within their own minds. I would suggest it is through this framework that it becomes the focal point and offers the mechanism to provide these necessary conditions and can set the “pulse”that enables the innovation juices to flow.

The competitive pace today and for a sustaining future requires innovation engagement from the top. Executives who understand their role in shaping innovation frameworks and activities, and, more importantly, increasing opportunities and engagement for the entire organization, that can be “driven” through this framework, will deliver better and more sustained innovation outcomes by its engagement effect.

Innovation needs to be seen coming from the top as compelling.

There are some very compelling arguments why the leadership of our organizations do need to become fully involved in providing and guiding the innovation design. Organizations need an overarching strategic design for innovation and this must come from the top.

Here are two series of short papers laying out the business case for the engagement of the top of our organizations within innovation, based initially upon turning the buzzword of innovation into the imperative and a further set of papers based on leaders need to engage and drive their innovation needs to achieve the strategic growth they believe is achievable.

We need to reduce this present gap of poor innovation leadership; we believe the Executive Innovation Work Mat approach can definitely help towards this goal, it has real value to investigate, construct and implement as an overarching framework for innovation alignment within organizations.

The post The Overarching Proposition for the Executive Innovation Work Mat first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

When it comes to fostering innovation we do get more into the fuzzy part that for many is made up of more the intangibles that covers culture, climate and conditions to innovate. These increasingly make up the environment for innovation.

There is another side of the equation, less fuzzy if you determine its parts well, and that is its governance.

For me, the environment and governance make up the formal and informal part of fostering innovation. I’d like to touch on both here in this blog.

There are clear correlations between having formalized innovation governance and structuring your environment both well and thoughtfully. Then you perhaps don’t need to rely on  miracles

There is, I feel, much to be gained by managing both sides of a formal and informal set of innovation approaches, made of both offering guidance and setting the tone and atmosphere that make up the environment and governance of innovation.

One side is more specified, considered and driving innovation, the other is more articulating, nurturing and encouraging.

The Environment for Innovation
There is always far more written about the culture of innovation than the environment for it. Why is that?

The fostering of the environment to pursue innovation means different things to different people. An innovation environment is made up of creating the atmosphere to encourage and nurture, it needs a vision which totally connects innovation in people’s minds.

It could translate in its meaning for many just being in ‘an amazing place to work’ or it means creating and encouraging new spaces to stimulate different thinking. It might encourage through simply providing the space to stimulate; the generation of ideas, a place that fosters interaction and collaboration.

The environment offers the place and space to chase after those challenges, to be somewhere that inspires, to be pushed and stretched, both in minds and bodies, to achieve new and great innovation.

Changing the environment by encouraging certain attributes does change people’s behaviour and beliefs. In thinking through the environment you wish to achieve, you are just not looking to sow the seeds for the new that is about to happen but to harvest the crop that is often simply residing.

You want the current box to get bigger and  you seek others to push out its sides but in realistic and managed ways, that meet the organizations objectives but give them growing pride and satisfaction.

To achieve this you need to link this and communicate it in ways that resonate, that become the common language of the organization and this also partly comes through the other side, the Governance of Innovation.

This needs thinking through well, articulating and ensuring it is in place, each day on a consistent basis. Getting the right environment in place for innovation needs to be pursued and worked upon at all levels but the leadership must set the tone, the vision and provide the means to achieve this.

The Governance for Innovation
Governance sets out different procedures to capture and translate an array of diverse thinking and interactions, to make innovation effective in providing that right environment.

Establishing a more formal innovation governance structure that deals with issues surrounding funding, balancing short and long-term objectives, seeking alignment and allocating clear responsibilities all can fall under this. It can also be the decision-making point of reference.

Recently there has been a great series on Governance by Jean-Philippe Deschamps, professor of technology and innovation management at IMD Lausanne, Switzerland. the first in a series of articles is here  http://tinyurl.com/d698jd5

Governance is often about struggling to obtain consistency, to balance demands; the environment is about pushing the bounds of stimulating and promoting fresh thinking. This stimulating environment needs its evaluation and how it sets about how ‘it’ fosters interactions and collaboration.

It is the atmosphere and conditions put in place as the environment that seeks to achieve out of the ordinary, great innovation, it is the governance that tries to make this orderly and fitting. This is a constant ‘dance’ and you need the environment and governance to tango to make this happen.

Complexity in Degrees

As innovation increases in complexity, you can get a decrease in the effectiveness of the innovation function. You need to constantly balance between freedom to explore and experiment and achieving accountability and control.

This is the ‘dance’ between managing the environment for allowing innovation to flourish with the guidelines to shape this.

Managing both does take a certain amount of creativity, especially when you are working on those big bets. As you work across functions, across boundaries and sometimes across known, established categories you need that governance to revert too.

If you don’t have clear governance you can quickly poison the atmosphere and create a negative environment.

Within this balance you do need to seek alignment to have available intervention tools but keep checking against innovation ambitions. If you don’t know what the environmental conditions should be and how people should behave and you fail to provide the formal mechanisms you can end up with a unhealthy innovation environment, even though some of the other innovation factors are in place.

The Meeting in the Middle

To orchestrate both a thriving environment for innovation and being able to provide the guidelines of the governance, needs to meet in the middle. The two sides within this equation need to find common cause, a common language, develop the protocols and appropriate communication methods.

Openness and trust fosters innovation and the environment so that can have a consistent flow of internal communications across the organization that promotes. Putting openness and trust into the heart of innovation you encourage and infuse the environment and in so doing, help the governance.

“Working innovation well” needs a focus on relationships so each person can relate to each other and seek other out in a collaborating atmosphere built on trust and openness.  It needs constant information sharing in feedback and more structured ways. It needs clear decision-making, built up around ground rules that are both formal and informal that sets the tone but does not suppress innovation.

Finally, you need innovation leadership effectiveness that encourages certain behaviours, sets the standards and norms and constantly talks about the vision and mission that innovation is set around.

Achieving Balance

Balancing the two sides, of building the environment to promote innovation and the governance to formulate and guide you, enable you to get far closer to successful work execution.

By setting about in constructing the rules, offering guidelines, promoting norms and values, along with encouraging openness and trust you can transform your innovation efforts.

By supporting and promoting certain behaviours and skills that build upon knowing what capabilities and competencies can promote innovation, you do actually get a lot closer to the contextualize of the innovation framework in all these combined efforts.

This more integrated approach gives organizational intent, commitment and growing fit.

To offer both clear boundaries and freedom needs the environment and governance to dance in tandem for great innovation. Are you taking innovation dancing lessons?

The post Two sides of an equation for shaping innovation. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Life seems to reawaken within. I often wish we could capture the ‘sense’ of spring and what it promises to bring from this change of season. Those of us who witness the change of seasons are so lucky.

I’ve also been reminded recently about the phrase offered by a number of leaders to explain a positive encouraging shift after a tough time, it goes like this: “we do see some green shoots that are offering some early signs of growth and recovery.”

Spring captures that growth moment. It is often talking to us of renewal. Innovation needs that capturing opportunity as well.

Freezing the moment to listen
Tell me why are we so notoriously bad at not learning from our past downturns? We still fail to talk to each other, to spend the time to reflect, to learn, to adjust, and too observe. So much is “brushed under the carpet.”

We still can’t find a common language of understanding within organizations, or dealing across organizations. We just simply end up spending a ridiculously large part of our time “talking at each other, or across each other” We lose so much time, energy and opportunity.

We are simply losing so much time in the innovation debates
Innovation is challenging, it is complex, yet we chose to ignore so much of what is available to us to ‘spot’ new possibilities, resolve those unmet needs or improve on what is offered to help in our daily needs.

There is no better moment than to stop and rediscover how to listen, to truly listen. Just stop for one minute. Innovation is calling for a common language, a common understanding yet all I hear is the consistent throb of different views, making it difficult to interpret what is right, what is wrong.

With there being so much conflicting advice being offered in this innovation space we ‘freeze’; regretfully not for the right reason, to enjoy the moment, to learn from it, to take something positive away to improve our lives but more than often we become even more unsure and stop listening.

We shut out many of the sounds because they conflict, they are jarring and not as they should be, in harmony.

The search for a common language
I’ve argued, as have others, we need to find a common language for innovation. Alexander Osterwalder in his opening to his concept of the Business Model Canvas always starts by posing the question on Business Models “We lack a common language” as everyone see’s the business model differently, if at all.

The brilliance within his canvas approach is that it offers a unique way to bring everyone onto the same page. We need to do this across more of innovation’s activities- to bring everyone on the same page.

I see the canvas approach taking hold in many different ways. I’ve read about the Enterprise Canvas, the Business Architecture Canvas, the Lean Canvas, and recently the Business Case Canvas.

I watch with growing interest the approach taken by Paidi O’Reilly, along with some of his colleagues in Ireland, who are presently working on the development of their view of an Innovation modelling software tool. It offers up at its heart, an Innovation Model Canvas, for moving from generation to commercialization.

I’d come up one level on what I’ve seen and read of Paidi’s work and argue we need an Innovation Structure Canvas as well. One that articulates the innovation environment we would wish to operate within. Something that ‘frame’s’ innovation from that firms perspective so we can keep going back to this overarching ‘innovation canvas’ to confirm and test where we are going to see if we are achieving the climate and environment we agreed .

We also need to combine forces

If we could learn to capture,  articulate and explore what we want to achieve on this “Innovation Structure Canvas” we can really begin to talk to others in a shared language. Open innovation, collaborative innovation is fraught with misunderstanding. Whenever we engage with others we must work hard at overcoming differences of opinion, if we want to engage them in our venture.

Structuring our conversations firstly around this canvas perhaps is a good way to test and validate what is in there, shown on this one page canvas so we can gain far more quickly from the other person’s reaction in smarter ways. They can identify or challenge what we want to achieve and we all can achieve and go to a deeper level of conversation by sharing this common starting point.

Steve Blank argues we all need to get out of the office more and test our hypothesis. Innovation is uncertain, it is often made up of guesses and hunches, of sparks of ideas and the more we can ‘show’ its potential value, the more others can relate and improve on that concept. Steve has a customer development process based on two distinct parts- search and execution.Creating a right environment for innovation is made up of a constant ongoing search and execution also.

Business the world over is in search of growth, more today than for a long time. We are ‘emerging’ from a severe downturn, a shock to the world’s economies and one thing recently struck me as a gap to fill, to build a bridge across a divide.

Seeking each other out

Large organizations are desperately searching for ways to change, to adapt to the new circumstances and challenges happening. The problem for many is they simply don’t know how too, the more they try, the more it seems complex. They often lack the real courage to rip up the existing business model and all that supports it. They presently are searching for the how too so as to navigate in these choppy waters of change.

Small organizations are seemingly more nimble, less burdened with heritage, legacy, superstructures that weigh you down and they can see so many breaking opportunities on where change is happening. They are closer to the ground from ‘seeing it’ to ‘reacting to it’ quickly but so often get held back for the lack of the very resources large organizations have, often in abundance, to mobilize and capitalize once they are set on a course.

Now is a good time for both large and small to find their ‘complementaries’, to recognize that have value even more to collaborate together. The large organization might have to moderate it ‘predatory’ behaviour though, the small organization’s fear of ‘David and Goliath’ and worried their ‘single shot’ is not going to make the mark does need careful and consideration in managing.

They both need to find new ways to combine, so the ones that have resources work with the ones that have the ‘sharper’ pulse of seeing opportunity, and this combination of ‘creative juices’ and ‘appropriate resource and energy’ are combined for mutual gain far more in collaborative, mutually sharing ways.

Not in the old ways of simply ‘acquisition’ that so often tended to destroy the very entrepreneurial essence that gave the success to the venture.

The back of a napkin

Great ideas are often captured on a napkin, on one page. We need to find ways where that initial capture of a great idea, of a real reason for instance on why ‘we’ should combine forces, needs some capturing mechanism.

The concept of the one page canvas can be the place to paint our vision but in a structured way and the initial meeting place for innovation to come alive for all those that choose to go there.

A road map that ‘speaks’ of growth, of differentiation, of operational and execution excellence and customer potential/ acceptance as the necessary building blocks, of how to achieve it, so others can ‘see it’, challenge or improve upon it because they are “speaking the same language.”

By the way check this out: the Napkin Academy on http://bit.ly/HrYhKX

The pressing need is in finding a different ways to talk a common language.

If we do want to move beyond our past ways to manage, top down, bottom up, we need to engage far more people, across a far more diverse marketplace of interested parties. We need to draw them in, to seek their participatation and understanding, within our innovation canvas design, so we are all on this same page.

We might want to extend the concept of the canvas across the business in even more novel designs than the Business model canvas so we can quickly sketch, to discuss and to listen to all those who chose to want to engage, who equally want to share and seek out fresh opportunity.

Innovation might be made of many things intangible but it can be captured. We need to allow it to be seen, just like those first ‘green shoots, so it can be nurtured, improved upon and fully shared in common understanding.

Just like spring, we need to ‘trigger all our senses’ for the need to grow, to talk to each other in a common language and appreciate how we are going to ‘set about’ innovation by achieving this new growth that can only be really achieved in a different way of shared understanding.

The post A No Better Moment first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.