Well some of us do, but sadly most tend to become risk-avoiding because of the environment they are in or have been associated with for long periods, where avoidance rubs off, it seeps into the soul.

Many enjoy being simply ‘passive’, avoiding anything that smacks of being ‘proactive’; it is safer to be ‘reactive’. Innovation and heaven can equally wait.

Putting it simply most people and organizations are just afraid to take risks and this fear takes over and drives their choices. Innovation is certainly something that suffers from this fear of risk.

Organizations miss critical opportunities, individuals fail to speak out and argue for a given change or innovative idea. We can simply stop growing, to want to become something more, we take the easy option, we avoid risk.

Reducing innovation to the lowest common denominator.

How often have you felt all the risk mitigation has been taken out of the innovation concept you have been working upon, for it to emerge as a pale reflection of the original idea? Often I can hear.

We need to be reminded that innovation is the act (risk-taking) of introducing something new (creativity) that adds potential value. By reducing the risk we often do not produce something better, just simply an alternative to what is already out there.

Minimise the risk, strive for certainty, avoid the awkward questions, and just keep the head down and toe the line.

Our organizations talk about the need for risk but don’t walk the risk path.
The understanding of risk will always have associated with some fear, discomfort and resistance and that can be an uncomfortable place to go.

The whole ‘act’ of letting go is never easy. It is the ability to manage the risk that reduces its fear. It is through experimentation we gain our best learning, we actually are forward learning as we are accelerating our knowledge.

Surely the more we attempt something different, proving or disproving it makes for exciting work, we become motivated, curious and want more, providing there is an encouraging environment to experiment and explore.

As I have suggested before “shaping ideas, taking risks, allowing experimentation, providing tolerance (of failure or debate), exploring the unknowns, all should be an integral part of innovation”.

Innovation is risk-taking so let’s embrace it, not just for the sake of taking risks where you can become addicted to the thrill but in constantly seeing the positive payoff within the risk, it needs to be appropriate and set against the ‘given’ situation and the learning in potential loss but recognizing the potential in gain.

The search is for meaningful contributions

There is so much negativity swirling around our organizations, a real detachment that is raising alarm bells.

Today’s workers are “neither empowered nor inspired to navigate the challenges faced by twenty-first-century organizations” according to a recent Deloitte report and commented upon here by Steve Denning .

As Steve observes in this article, as a result, creative, passionate workers simply don’t want to work in organizations with “clearly defined roles, organizational silos, and predictability”.

We are also in real need of better “inner working lives” and we need to look for ways to allow our people to become engaged, feeling part of something that allows for being more creative and passionate.

An environment offering somewhere that is seen as more productive, looking to build for future contribution and finding ways to be more collegial, working in teams on these experiments and explorations to learn and advance the innovation thinking. It allows us to grow from within.

We need to find ways for higher levels of risk tolerance. We push the ordinary back into the extraordinary and all of us what to be associated with those sorts of moments, those events that give meaning, purpose and pride to what we do. We need to allow risk in, so the risk can come and live with you.

Our leaders need to lead and guide.

When one hears that the leadership is in disagreement it tends to stop organizations from being adventurous until that issue or sticking point is resolved.

When it comes to innovation we do need to look to our management to manage option proliferation, resolve criteria disagreements, overcome stalled decisions, clarify rejections or discount new ideas before they are ‘fully’ formed

Those leaders assigned to lead innovation need to become more engaged, stop the limited participation and take the time innovation does require. Head nodding or ‘just’ talking innovation just does not cut it!

Commitment does matter, enormously, up and down the organization.
We need to recognize allowing risk is becoming the basis for a commitment to change

Wanting innovation requires the need to encourage the management of risk. Today we are in markets with slower growth, higher volatility and potential for disruption. Risk needs to be proactive, not reactive.

Equally the sentiment that we cannot disrupt our core needs some shifting in thinking as others are busy working on ways to do that to you at this very minute. Risk comes from not knowing.

We need to manage the ‘certainty of return’ by making the knowledge that comes from incremental steps of an experiment to validate an idea into a new innovation needs this consistently improving the business case.

That comes from steady ‘readiness-based decisions that prototypes or pilots put into the hands of the consumer or customer to explore around, will advance our knowledge, each time of the potential value and ‘seen’ worth of this concept over the existing ones in the market place.

Shifting our thinking can be gradual in learning

The effectiveness of risk assessments, capturing more and more external market data and attempting group prioritization certainly helps but in volatile markets this is not enough.

We need to develop those risk-mitigation steps to constantly increase confidence; we need to look more internally or with our partners at our capabilities to measure the controllable factors and events to keep innovation on track and we need to seek out individual stakeholders discussions to manage their unique concerns.

This is far more a shift to execution than relying on market attractiveness conditions alone.

Thinking about risk in those different and manageable ways to move forward and grow

We need to mitigate uncertainty by constantly reiterating known and unknown risks through these constant engagements in experimentation, prototyping, and piloting concepts. This needs to be in a more dynamic ‘management of the portfolio’ concept, from concept to commercialization process.

A place where risk-mitigation needs to be in-built all the way, to build knowledge as it ‘reveals’ itself. In innovation, mostly completely new to the world it is never apparent, you have to ‘tease ‘ it out on its value and contribution.

Everything simply cannot be available when you often just don’t know, you take small steps often to feel your way and build that knowledge up.

We need to understand our reach and ability to grasp

The ability to push on and find out, to stretch, to understand our reach and our grasp, does need some risk-taking but in thoughtful, measured steps.

Good innovation needs measured risk-taking and let’s learn the ways to allow our innovation to happen and get our passion and engagement back, flowing through the veins of our organizations.

We need a mantra of ‘build-test-feedback-revise’ iterations performing constant steps and learning to gather information to reduce uncertainty. One that is far more agile, vibrant, dynamic, and flexible that applies a leaner, faster and more adaptive and risk-based approach.

The risk-contingency is about constant steps and learning to gather information to reduce uncertainty.

We need to move forward with a degree of certainty but also perhaps a little fear.
How about this as an idea to explore?
How about approving some pilot projects and providing resources to have unfettered six-month periods with no rules and no reviews but at the end of this agreed period, ‘something’ has to be seen and tested by a customer.

Then you embed the learning and further scale
It encourages risk but in clear time frames and with a definitive result that advances knowledge and takes you closer to its future value.

You look for and encourage new perspectives. Is this that risky or is it perhaps allowing risk to be managed in new ways of learning?

We do need to rethink the management of risk for innovation.

New business growth is very different from business as usual but in all honesty, is there that much business as usual still around?

We do need to loosen up our thinking on risk when it comes to innovation, otherwise, our growth will remain limited, stuck in the fear of the unknowns?

The post Risk Is Understanding Your Scope of Reach Should Exceed Your Grasp. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I often think of the parable of “The Elephant and the Blind Men” when I get into discussions about measuring innovation.

What are truths, what are the fallacies?  The parable implies that one’s often subjective experience can be true on your need, but not necessarily the other person’s view of their understanding of value.

You get, as the end result, a failure to account for other ‘beliefs’ or capture the real value and miss providing broader motivations to encourage the innovation elephant along.

Establishing the right metrics that motivate and yield the result you are looking for is sometimes a tough challenge. You should always start with the bigger picture, organizational needs and then design the metrics and cascade these throughout the organization.

This part of the series explores the Innovation Work Mat

In a series of articles I will be looking at each of the seven components within the executive innovation work mat to raise questions to probe and prompt the necessary thinking that needs to be made in organizations at different management levels determined to build a lasting innovation competence and structure.

Within this work mat series I’ve already offered some opening thoughts on the role of Governance and Innovation, and also the Environment for innovation matters to innovate followed by the innovating conditions for your Culture and Climate.

This is the fourth article aimed at deeper engagement and understanding of the connected parts within innovation management on Metrics and Motivations.

Raising some initial thoughts here.

We really struggle to describe, then measure and then find the right motivations and reward mechanisms and then achieve broad agreement, on something as important as innovation.

If we link metrics into the reward and compensation structure then we release all the energy, passion and anguish and these can serve in many contrary ways.

Linking compensation into all the competing motivations to manage and reward innovation activity is fraught with problems and can have many negative consequences.

Again my elephant comes back into view wandering around in your board room – it can disrupt everything as it charges after the results that it wants, trampling much that is good in its path.

Today’s particular trend of focusing on short-term performance can limit innovation significantly and has innovation consequences.

Let’s look at metrics and motivations with greater connected awareness.

At the end of the story on the elephant and the blind men, a wise man was passing; listened to all the different views of why no one could agree on what they thought the elephant was like. The wise man then replied “All of you are right; you were touching different parts of the elephant so the elephant has all the features as you all said”

Metrics and motivation can really make innovation happen

The value of the measures lies in resolving these eight different questions: 1) are they clear and simple 2) are they relevant to you and the central issues 3)are they timely in what can be achieved, 4)are they credible to the stakeholders involved 5) do they relate to the importance of the goals or trivial, 6) can we act upon them 7) are they consistent to the strategic message and aligned, and finally, 8) are all the investment in these measurements and motivators to capture and analyse, seem sensible and affordable, and lead to real impact in aiding innovation to achieve the goals required.

We do need to focus on the future innovating purpose surely?

The innovation links to any measurement system I would argue should point towards the organization’s strategic need and the innovation outcomes required. Within this there are broadly three parts: 1) knowing the organization’s future-orientated vision and the general direction that innovation needs to take, 2) along with the strategic carriers in types, priorities, functions, the indicated mix of innovation activities and then 3) the growth gap that exposes the organizations’ challenges, so as to bridge these knowledge and resource gaps.

These can build innovation capacity today for future innovating outcomes as they are focused on future work to be done.

For me the output intention of the Integrated Executive Innovation Work Mat should be driving the business case for how innovation contributes and offers the what, where, when, and why within the communications for others to be mobilized into actions and build out build upon this strategic working document.

Then we set about communicating it to the organization

I have written before about the cascading effect and communicating value that can support this. Then our metrics begin to cascade down to bring people, the process, and the innovative design of inputs and outputs turn into successful alignment outcomes can come into play. I’ll broaden out my thinking on this area in the next post.

It is within the leadership of organizations to become intimately involved in what is important in innovation for their organization, otherwise, we are back to the elephant and the blind men. All others simply believe they have the answer. Leadership needs to really engage in where it ‘expects’ innovation to yield its results and then ensures it links reward to this set of outcomes.

So what does success look like?

We should start with the ideals that our innovation activities should be pervasive, to be sustainable and we need to deliver clear business results mapped to known and potential unrecognised customer needs as our primary incentive points.

We need to layout the building blocks to ‘group’ management and employee identification with what is innovation success. It can begin to motivate all the stakeholders involved. This gives us the opportunity to evaluate appropriate resources, provide the workable benefits related to learning, encourage the identification of problems and encourage the identification of solutions and set about communicating to all involved the understanding of what success can look like.

Building the innovation metric and motivation scorecard there are hundreds of measures you could bring into anything; the skill is you need to find only the right few that focus upon the results you really need achieving. They need to somehow “talk to each other” so they are mutually reinforcing and all involved are pulling in a similar direction.

What gets measured should connect and matter – an example

I like one I came across some years back, by Cap Gemini, which firstly suggested you define what innovation was going to be about. Their example was “a robust creative process that turns out very distinct outputs with significant impact in the market place” and then worked on a scale for assessing the degree of innovativeness on a three-dimensional grid of Impact, Distinctiveness and Creative Process.

This then becomes the measuring and motivation barometer tied to the strategic need of an organization of what is expected out of innovation. That sort of complete picture can only come from the senior managements full committed to “wanting distinct outputs of significant impact in the market place”

I think Bain & Co offered also a really valuable performance measuring framework.

This framework offers a really good structure to begin to measure and link the organization. I think it can stimulate initial thinking well.

(click to enlarge)

There is a case for approaching measurement differently through the intangibles that make up most of our capital.

Measuring attempts need to take into account the many intangibles that make up innovation and make them tangible. Understanding the relationships within our intangibles allows groups to benchmark, diagnose, allocate resources, inform others and compensate employee’s efforts through their ongoing knowledge learning. The understanding of our intangibles is for me vital to crack.

Getting this right is increasingly important as the intellectual capitals are being recognized as the real value creation intersections. Establishing the metrics that focus on generating valuable innovation also helps extend ambition and future goals, pushing future innovation strategies as you grow in confidence and understanding of these dynamics.

To end we go back to avoid the story of the Elephant and the blind men.

By taking the integrated approach through the work mat, senior leaders can  offer strategic guidelines into the measures and motivations, by laying out their beliefs and expectations from innovation. They can’t afford to leave this open-ended, just being hopeful, innovation activities need essential alignment.

If we continue to allow the ‘blind men’ to offer their separate opinions and then decide in isolation of the bigger picture, they ‘see’ only their part of the elephant.

I believe if you put in place that critical strategic innovation document, wrestled out of engaging across all the work mat parts, the metrics and motivators can ‘form’ around this strategic intent. This can drive innovation performance.

Seeing the whole picture is the team sitting on (at) the top, directing the innovation elephant along its journey to the destination where they want it to go. Metrics and motivations follow as the path is clearer to measure and travel. We need those wise men to clarify this.

The post Measuring and motivating the innovation elephant first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

It is what happens after this first public exposure, that you will find out its value and contribution and that does depends on a lot of factors, all in other people’s hands seeing value and worth. Those that will recognize a clear value to help them and their organizations should welcome this, I hope.

So what am I talking about?
The development of an emerging framework, which we call the Executive Innovation Work Mat, is where we are suggesting, lies the responsibility of the CEO or senior executive, to construct and enact.

Executives need to fill a leadership gap found in innovation, and define a robust innovation framework.  They can deliver the missing innovation alignment part by engaging and providing this leadership required in innovation that is often missing.

What these contain are outlined in our framework that we have exposed this week in a series of seven blogs. Just click on the link above for the foundation article.

There is a movement detected in the innovation air!

We are seeing that innovation is becoming a more vital part of organizations ability to manage their future. There is an emerging formalized need for innovation within organizations but its whole structure, the innovation ecosystem or whatever name you want to call it, is today being simply left to chance.

Its construct is not pieced together in the best coherent way to build a culture for sustaining innovation. Innovation lacks people who are specifically accountable, it gets built-in often ad-hoc, piecemeal fashion.

It leaves many involved in the process frustrated with the amount of effort innovation needs and the lack of results that have not delivered that necessary impact and performance-effect often promised and so desired, to break from the competitive pack.

We are failing to build and nurture this ‘innovation ecosystem’; we are not formulating and communicating where innovation links into strategy, it stays inarticulate and poorly communicated, it is left to others to interpret with a hope it fits somehow.

Because there is often lack of internal clarity, there is also a poor connection to the external environment where opportunities are never recognized for their value.

Equally where the customer remains dissatisfied with the present offering as one not meeting their explicit needs and where they often have to continue to compromise waiting.

While we continue to lack this explicit innovation structure or only recognize parts of it, it does have both short and long-term implications to the business. Businesses gets locked into set pathways; they tread the simple incremental path, for fear of stepping off it, is stepping into the unknown, just a foreign, really alien place where fear and failure lurk behind every tree. Each sound carries warning and cries out danger. We believe clearing a new pathway leads to better innovation

Closing the disconnect on innovation
There is such a disconnect going on. The organization ‘demands’ innovation, the leadership presents innovation at every opportunity, often more as a fig leaf for the embarrassment that eventually arrives, as innovation into the market place.

We need to set up a real connection between rhetoric and having in place real innovation infrastructures that work and are fully supported from the top. The leader is the source or energy point to make that happen, no one else. It cannot be simply delegated away. Whoever wants a leader that simply delegates growth, new wealth creation and your future to others?

There are certain correlations between leaders who are immersed in innovation and their organizations superior performance. This has been spoken off as one of the principle reasons why certain organizations have an innovation premium in the minds of customers, shareholders, investors and the community at large.

This week we offer a framework, the Executive Innovation Work Mat, that offers a real way to bring innovation as a topic to the highest level of the organization through its organizing mechanism of the seven essential domains for their engagement.

These efforts rely on mutual recognition that this leadership gap does exist and that it needs narrowing. It is for the leaders to construct the alignment points of the innovation efforts that deliver on the strategy and vision the leadership seeks.

We ask, Jeffrey Phillips and I, that you share our thinking and deliver this White Paper into the boardrooms of your organizations. Be those champions and advocates to place innovation in the spotlight, demanding it has to be changed.

Within this spotlight the aim is one that seeks to improve the organizations ability to achieve more than it offers today from its innovation activity, because its leadership is engaged and inextricably connected.

If we can accomplish that growing recognition, we can then go deeper into a specific set of dialogues that ‘fits’ with your organizations innovation aspirations. We stand ready for that set of challenges.

We start by talking about the issues and this is what this week has been all about. Talking and explaining this need for leadership engagement within this framework, first to the innovation community and equally across Jeffreys and my own networks, so as to gain a recognition and we trust a certain traction from this that we believe is valuable to achieve .
Will you become engaged in this?

The post Lining up the fundamentals in leadership and innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.