Innovation Tyrant

Square's harassment scandal shows dangers of startup culture - Human Resources

2013-02-19T12:26:00.001-08:00

When Square Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois left his job last month, citing legal threats from a young colleague with whom he had a two-year relationship, he threw a spotlight on the risks associated with the freewheeling startup culture that many entrepreneurs cherish.

Startups often thrive on a lack of rules and boundaries. But experts say that as they make the transition from a handful of people in a room to sizeable businesses, the hazards of operating without manual -- including lawsuits, reputational hits, and waning employee morale -- grow exponentially.

Longtime employees sometimes chafe at the arrival of human resources professionals, codes of conduct and other policies that they fear will step on the company's culture. Yet entrepreneurs and start-up investors say they ultimately have little choice.

Take Facebook, which displayed murals of naked women, some riding dogs, in the Palo Alto offices it leased as a small company in 2005. As proud as some of the early employees were of them -- one was painted by the then-girlfriend of Facebook impresario and serial entrepreneur Sean Parker -- they got painted over shortly after venture-capital firm Accel Partners invested in the company. Facebook had no immediate comment.

About a year into the life of New York online-ad tracking startup DoubleVerify, an employee gave a presentation about how advertising

"That was the first time we realized, 'We gotta get a little more institutionalized," recalls founder Oren Netzer. Today, the company has policies concerning naked images. The same presentation would use a less controversial example, or obscure anything racy.

Alcohol is another dicey topic. "We used to have these new employee hazing ceremonies," said Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of San Jose virtualization company Nutanix, largely involving knocking back tequila shots with chili peppers. But once the company hit about 100 employees, some new hires pushed back and he started considering the potential for liability.

"It just faded away about four, five months ago," he said about the hazing. Potential concerns run the gamut from some employees feeling excluded if they don't drink to incidents that sometimes accompany drunken behavior.

At 250-person Canadian social-media management company Hootsuite, "I somewhat infamously have said I never wanted to work at a company with an HR department," founder Ryan Holmes says.

"That's coming back to bite me a little bit now."

Mission statements and HR fluff

A year ago, Holmes made his executive assistant the director of human resources. That type of promote-from-within strategy for HR is commonplace, startups say.

A few months into her role, the new HR director told Holmes the company needed a mission statement. "I said, 'Oh my God, this is HR fluff,'" Holmes remembers. But shortly afterward, when he overheard new hires discussing beliefs he thought were out of step with Hootsuite's ethos -- he says he cannot recall the details -- he realized she was right.

But Holmes says he is resisting conforming on other levels. Hootsuite employees attend teambuilding trips, including a recent stay at a hot-springs resort. That is the type of event big companies cut out -- Google (GOOG) halted its famous all-employee trips in 2009 -- often because of the potential for various kinds of legal liability and cost.

Holmes says he might have to rethink his overnight trips if the company ever goes public, but for now, he plans to keep going. "We think it's very valuable," he says.

At Nutanix, Pandey decided last summer's annual whitewater rafting trip on the Sacramento River would be the last. "We used to go through some rough rapids, and had a couple of close shaves," he said. "A couple of the guys aren't good swimmers."

Part of the philosophy is that young companies want to encourage a "think different" attitude, employees say.

"Start-ups by design want to differentiate themselves from the large companies like the HPs that have very thick employee handbooks," said Brian Samson, chief executive of HR for Startups, referring to Palo Alto computer company Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

Start-ups often deal with the inevitable by aiming for a careful, light-footed approach to new policies.

"I've tried to make sure we don't talk about rules," says Evan Wittenberg, HR head at Los Altos cloud-content firm Box. "The language around this really matters. These are guidelines."

Still, there are tensions as the company, which now employs around 700 and is considered a likely prospect for a 2013 initial public offering, grows. Cecilia Wong, people manager at Box, cites the daylong orientation process for new employees.

"I've had some managers ask, 'Why's it a full day? On my first day, it was just an hour, then I could hit the ground running,'" she says. She believes the full day is important for explaining the company culture, business and logistics issues.

Consequences can be dire

Read more via mercurynews.com

What to do next? What are some other signs of trouble in your business?

In a rapidly changing marketplace, innovation isn’t optional. It’s essential. We’ll teach you how to cultivate innovation within yourself and within your organization. We’re patient experts that will teach you skills and techniques you can apply within your organization to bring powerful ideas forward. We’ll enable you to integrate innovation and competitive strategy into the core of your organization.

Start developing your competitive advantage. Call us at 719-266-6703 or simply complete the form.

Ten signs your business is doomed

2013-02-19T11:42:00.001-08:00

Illustration: John Shakespeare.

For a second, suspend the bullish self-belief every entrepreneur needs to get through the day. Weigh up whether your business has much of a future.

Then there are the warnings that America's “fiscal cliff” – a raft of looming tax rises and spending cuts - could have global repercussions.

Scary stuff. Here are 10 nitty gritty warning signs to help you decide if your business is doomed.

1. Products you invest in materialize late

Potential threats that can cause your dream to stall abound.

2. You have an internal ownership crisis

3. You have lost touch with technology

4. Key staff are leaving

5. A key client collapsed

6. Management just got a pay rise

7. Next year's fiscal targets are dramatically up

8. You slashed your charity budget

9. You are reliant on a healthy economy

10. You can't sleep

In a rapidly changing marketplace, innovation isn’t optional. It’s essential. We’ll teach you how to cultivate innovation within yourself and within your organization. We’re patient experts that will teach you skills and techniques you can apply within your organization to bring powerful ideas forward. We’ll enable you to integrate innovation and competitive strategy into the core of your organization.

Start developing your competitive advantage. Call Jim at 719-266-6703 or simply complete the form.

Guy Kawasaki: Advice from an Apple Veteran on Making Your Venture Successful

2013-02-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

Guy Kawasaki is just like any other Hawaiian-born, hockey-playing, trendsetting, jet-hopping corporate evangelist, entrepreneur, author, columnist, blogger, venture capitalist, new media creator next door. He says success starts with a proper mantra.

“Almost every entrepreneur begins by creating a mission statement. Wrong,” the brash 55-year-old Silicon Valley veteran tells SUCCESS. “Mission statements are too broad and boring. No matter what kind of organization you are starting, what you first need to do is develop a mantra. Keep it two to four words max. You may never have to write your mantra down, publish it in your annual report or print it on posters. Indeed, if you do have to enforce your mantra in these ways, it’s not the right mantra.”
Kawasaki’s personal mantra: “Empower People.” The mantra of Garage Technology Ventures, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm he co-founded and directs, is “We start up startups.” Some other good examples Kawasaki often cites: Target—“Democratizing Design”; Nike—“Authentic Athletic Performance”; or Starbucks— “Rewarding Everyday Moments.”

Of course, the mantra is just one step in starting a business. Kawasaki stays in great demand relating the rest of the story. Author of the best-selling entrepreneurial how-to guide, The Art of the Start, published in 2004, and the detail-packed Reality Check in 2008, he shares lessons forged from his high-flying days at Apple Computer, his own startups and venture capitalist experience.

Finding Meaning
In speeches and interviews, Kawasaki plays off his candid persona, prompting USA Today to refer to him as “a head-banging bruddah from a tough blue-collar neighborhood in Honolulu.”
His books are chock-full of specific advice for entrepreneurs, but ground zero for Kawasaki is “the one question you should ask yourself before starting any new venture: Do I want to make meaning?” That is followed by other queries in the same vein: Do I want to make the world a better place? Increase the quality of life? Right a terrible wrong? Prevent the end of something good?
“We meet with entrepreneurs all the time and they tell us what they think we want to hear, that they want to make money,” he says. “When we hear that, it’s so depressing. It took me 20 years to come to this understanding, but the companies that are successful are the ones who create meaning. Create the next curve; don’t improve on sameness.”
That said, Garage is in a money business, and “revenue is the single-biggest challenge to entrepreneurs today because no one is buying anything,” he says.
“The least likely company to make a sale is a startup,” he says. “In these times, corporate employees are not likely to risk their career buying from a startup. There’s no magical answer on how to overcome that. It takes perseverance.”
While the home run has eluded Garage, it has nurtured a number of success stories, including D.light Design, which makes cheap, solar-powered lights intended for use in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, and individual investor champion The Motley Fool. The firm’s portfolio company, information-sharing site Kaboodle, was sold to the Hearst Corporation. PC Magazine named another client, job search engine and recruitment advertising network Simply Hired, one of its “Top 100 Websites for 2009.”
It’s a very different game today than before the dot-com bust.
“In today’s economy and tight credit markets, there is a much greater emphasis on getting to revenues fast and more emphasis on business models than before,” Kawasaki says. “You also meet companies that are further along. Whereas, a few years ago the accepted practice was you raised a bunch of money, then you went away for a year and built your software. You needed the money to hire people, buy tools and all that kind of stuff.”
It’s Not as Bad as It Seems
Aside from the fact that no one is buying anything, Kawasaki explains this may be one of the best times to start a company. “If you look at the factors a company needs—people, marketing, tools and Web services, storage, bandwidth, those kinds of things—the basics are extremely affordable,” he says. For instance:

Marketing is basically free with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Tools are basically free because of Open Source.

There is an abundant, cheap workforce because of all the people out of work.

Inexpensive services are available—with cloud computing, for example, basically for $500 you can get a lot of storage and bandwidth.

“The cost of starting a company is lower than ever, which means you can go longer without venture capital,” he says. “It also means, however, that when you do need venture capitalists, they expect you to show up with more done than just a PowerPoint.”
In addition to Garage and writing books and columns, Kawasaki has set his sights on new media communication as co-founder of Truemors, a free-flow rumor mill Web site that NowPublic acquired in 2008, and Alltop, an “online magazine rack” for the Web that collects and posts the headlines of the latest stories from sites and blogs it considers the “best.”

Click here to learn more
“The content and advertising businesses are very difficult ,” he says. “Someone explained it to me this way: If you look at a tech startup, most people try to go after elephants. A good elephant would be a Salesforce.com kind of company, right? Other people happen to bag whales, such as Google. So you have everyone hunting elephants and whales, but it’s more reasonable to go after deer. A deer is big enough to fi ll you but not so big you kill yourself going after an elephant or a whale. But most tech companies today are going after rabbits and prairie dogs. I can make the case that even more Web companies are going after plankton.”
The greatest benefit of founding Truemors (which cost less than $13,000 to launch) was that it led to Alltop, Kawasaki says. “We noticed so much traffic came from popurls [an Internet aggregator launched in March 2006], which inspired us to do Alltop.” Truemors had no business plan, no venture-capitalist pitch, and only 7 1/2 weeks to launch. He registered 55 domain names. Software development cost $4,500.
Nononina, the company that owns Alltop, is Kawasaki’s “two guys and a gal” garage band—or more accurately, a team consisting of “one guy in home offi ce (Will Mayall), one gal on a kitchen table (Kathryn Henkens) and one Guy in United Airlines seat 2B (Kawasaki).”
The New Information Sage
Alltop, which receives the bulk of Kawasaki’s focus today, tries to offer a robust information shortcut. “There is no such thing as too much information,” he explains. “I think there is no limit to the amount of information you can have. The question is, does it limit you from acting? The amount of information can be beside the point if you don’t have enough courage to make a decision.” Alltop is a snug fit with his internal wiring, which is always searching, learning and regurgitating, living as he directed in his 1999 book, Rules for Revolutionaries: “Eat like a bird; poop like an elephant.”
“It has been a joy to do this company because the blogs and sites are thrilled to be on it,” Kawasaki explains. “For the people who use it, it is like a breath of fresh air. If you were to Google travel, you would get over a billion matches. That’s not really useful. At Alltop, you would get a few hundred where we’ve aggregated and displayed the latest stories. Instead of some computer algorithm, it’s a curated site—a human has decided what should be there.”
Immersion is part of his household’s wiring as well. When Kawasaki’s kids became enamored with hockey after attending a San Jose Sharks game, his wife Beth, whom he met at Apple, insisted that if the kids were going to play, Kawasaki “couldn’t just be one of these venture capitalists on the sideline playing with a BlackBerry and that I had to take an active part.”
Now, if Kawasaki is not traveling, he plays hockey every day of the week. “I play more than they do,” he says.
Hockey analogies pepper his conversations (he often talks about how if he’d accepted the job as Yahoo CEO when it was offered to him in the late ’90s, he could own the San Jose Sharks right now—“what’s a billion here or a billion there?” he playfully asks). One of the things he says he’s learned with Apple, Truemors, and Alltop “is that success is a grind.”
“Many people, especially young people, think success is event-related,” he explains. “You announce. You ship. And then life is good and you go straight to the moon. Instead, what happens is you ship with bugs in the software, and people don’t like your product. Then you fi x and fi x and fix, and you keep shipping.
“I suppose there are some instant successes, but that’s principally an oxymoron. That’s like saying [Pittsburgh Penguins captain] Sidney Crosby was an instant success in the NHL. Well, sure, in his first two years he did very well, but that ignores the 17 previous years he practiced or played hockey five hours a day. There’s no instant there, or here.”
Although he acknowledges he shares the entrepreneurial trait that is always looking for the new thing, the next challenge, not being content to stick to one thing, he insists he can be satisfied.
“If I were to sell Alltop for, say, $10 million, I would disappear from the face of the earth,” he says with a laugh. “You’d never see me again.”
His track record indicates otherwise. via success.com

Using Facebook To Engage With Staff at Canada’s Cara Restaurants - Social Media

2013-02-14T03:42:00.001-08:00

The Cara network of restaurants uses an application on Facebook called the Staff Room for associates to share stories about restaurant service and tips about managing their jobs.

In corporations with a franchisee network, social tools can be used to effect change in front-line behaviors, even when these front-line employees do not work directly for the organization.

Natasha Nelson is vice president of business intelligence at Cara Operations, a Canadian restaurant chain with five brands and 700 franchisees. When Nelson joined Cara, the CEO asked her to engage the company’s associates to improve service delivery on the front lines.

The problem was that the associates worked for the franchisees, not corporate. Many associates were young, worked part-time, and for some, this was their first job. There was a high degree of turnover. Yet this group was an important factor in determining the quality of the customer experience. How could Cara engage this group in a way that was simple and easy, and use that engagement to improve front-line service?

Nelson researched the problem and found little assistance. An article from one of the leading technology research firms advised against using Facebook to engage with employees. She explored using a portal technology platform, but could not find a way to drive associates to use it since they were not typical information workers. Eventually, Nelson’s IT department partnered with HR and marketing to develop a strategy built upon a Facebook application:

The associates all have it on their mobile devices, and go onto Facebook anyway every day. That’s how they communicate, that’s how they stay in touch. So we decided to use a platform that they already are on and that they know and love.

We launched this very, very slowly, starting at 12 locations of one of our more upscale brands, Milestones. We launched an application on Facebook, called the Staff Room, where we encouraged the associates to share stories about restaurant service and tips about managing their jobs. We are trying to encourage a hospitality gene, qualities that everyone should aspire to, like love serving people.

From this pilot we decided to make the Staff Room into a peer-to-peer recognition platform, because the center point of our strategy is guest experience. We’ll celebrate associate stories connected with the hospitality gene. More importantly, we’ll let staff recognize one another. Because their friends and family are also on their Facebook page, they’ll be recognized by them too.

We believe that this will be very powerful. People will share stories of how they’ve improved the guest experience; and their peers, friends and family will recognize them.

[Excerpted from part 6 of the 2012 Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project, conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review with Deloitte.]

Posted in: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, managing people, Social Business, Special Report: Social Business via sloanreview.mit.edu

Jim Woods is a strategy consultant and CEO of InnoThink Group. Leading advisors on strategy and innovation helping leaders make decisions based on innovative and unconventional insight. Read more.

Leadership Made Simple - Ten things you should do as a leader |

2013-02-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

Why should things be so complicated? If you browse books on amazon.com and search for leadership you will get 90264 hits. Much is written about leadership and more will come, but is there really that much magic to being a leader? Today I will try to make a short list of things that are important as a leader. Feel free to add additional points in the comments section.

Have a clear vision
Put 30 people in the middle of a wilderness and tell them; “let’s be the best!” As an alternative to that – Explain the map, give them the direction and time limits, or even better, give them the map and let them find the best route to your goal. How can your staff know what to do if you do not have a clear vision of where you are going? And yes, you need to tell them, because mind reading is still not a part of the general humans DNA.

Respect your employees
Yes, it needs to be said. A lot of leaders look down on their staff, you are dealing with people, and as soon as you realize this and know a little about psychology, you will understand that people are capable of doing great things. You used to be people once too. Be very careful about how you market your staff to the world around you.

Communicate what you expect
Back to the wilderness at point one. If your staff is going to survive you must make sure they know, that today is about walking in the wilderness, they need good boots, warm clothes, and you expect them to get to the camp before lunch. And if someone shows up in slippers send them home. My point is that for people to be able to understand what is expected they need to know. I have had a job where I was wondering if I did a good job, if I was going in the right direction, is this what is expected? What is important? And yes, I quit that job as I felt bad, even though the boss told me afterwards that I did a good job… imagine that, how would I know? Well I always do my best to be honest, but if you are Usain Bolt and run the opposite way in the Olympics, you might run as fast and far as you will, it might even be the best run ever, but it will never be a world record.

Make time for your staff
Make time in your calendar for your staff. You might be going to a bunch of meetings with different departments, managers and with your boss. But to get results, there is one meeting you should not skip. Make at least 30 minutes a month with each employee – to talk. About results, expectations, how they are doing, are they happy and so on. This talk has a purpose, and it is a talk about their performance and goals.

Give the right feedback, at the right time
Negative feedback – one on one, positive feedback, also one on one maybe… The “old” line is, praise in public, and criticize one on one. But you need to know your staff, some people want to be on public television giving a speech if they did something good (most men) – and some would rather be in a coffin, six feet under, than being the center of attention. You need to know what motivates them, how they like to be praised and when you should praise/criticize the team or individuals. Remember that an individual success might come because of the support of the team or other people. There is nothing more demotivated than listening to a boss praising the asshole that held the presentation you spent hours on making.

Be inspirational
Instead of telling your staff about the exact number on the bottom line, try to tell them how you are going to improve it. Accountants should never present the numbers; it will make your staff fall asleep. Listening to the specifics of a car is boring, hearing a story about how it is to drive is better; getting to drive it is the best. As a leader you might have to present boring stuff, but do you have to make it boring too? Talk in pictures, talk about what you need to do, to get to your goal, and be enthusiastic. Leadership is not about wearing a nice suit and be boring.

Make things happen
Depending on where you are in the leadership chain of command, and what tools you have been given. But your job as a leader is also to get things to happen. Your staff creates results, but you are supposed to get the stuff your staff needs. It might be new equipment, making sure that the IT-department fixes your departments troubles first. Feeling stuck is very demotivating, your job as a leader is to show that things are happening even, the small steps that take you in the right direction. Are you a middle manager, you also need to get things through to the top level management team to get things to happen.

Have some fun
A taxi passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question.
The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath, and stopped centimeters from a shop window.
For a second everything went quiet in the cab, then the driver said: “Look mate, don’t ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!”
The passenger apologized and said, “I didn’t realize that a little tap would scare you so much.”
The driver replied, “Sorry, it’s not really your fault. Today is my first day as a cab driver – I’ve been driving a van carrying dead bodies for the last 25 years…..(40 more or less fun stuff to do at work)

Get out of the way
Some leaders are never to be seen, and other get in on everything. Do not micromanage; guess you hired the best people in the first place? Give them what they need to do a good job, sit back, read my blog to pass time and given the right direction and tools, they will perform. Football managers do not play the field, neither should you!

Be human
It is ok to: be home when you are sick, take a day off when you need to recharge your batteries, to show emotions, to smile, have a bad day at work, and let people know. By being human, you will show your staff that they too can be human, it will prevent burnouts. Show that you care, even about their life outside your job.

You will get a long way being a leader, as long as you realize that you deal with people. There is one thing I left out of the list that is important. On Amazon there are more than 90.000 books for you to read about leadership. Leadership is a journey; you will never have enough knowledge. There is always room for improvement, and you should do your best to improve all the time. Leadership is about learning. Life is about learning, but I guess you already knew that.
via nevermindthemanager.com

Stephen Covey On Leadership - Why Character Matters More Than Personality

2013-02-06T22:57:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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What I Have Come to Believe About Management and Innovation

2013-02-06T12:11:00.001-08:00

Processes change swiftly.
Management seldom if ever changes at all.
Management always redirects blame.
Success is permanent
“What got us here will keep us here.”

The curse of success is that people try to codify it. Former IBM CEO, Lou Gerstner has said.“My view is that you perpetuate success by continuing to run scared, not by looking back at what made you great, but looking forward at what is going to make you ungreat, so that you are constantly focusing on the challenges that keep you humble, hungry and nimble.”

Doesn’t it amaze you that with all the discussions on innovation, new ideas and strategies, processes that amplify customer and employee engagement that organizations punctuate their work with methodology from retired or deceased CEO’s and gurus whose ideas were for then not now? Why is it that we all agree that we are now in a world of unprecedented hypercompetition yet can’t wait to employ yesterday’s strategies that were successful yesterday?

Is there really any wonder that in most all organizations things remain the same?

Is there really any wonder that in most all organizations things remain the same? To innovate management you have to encourage employees to challenge management and organizational dogma. You have to perpetually aspire to be a contrarian to be willing to learn a new DNA of questioning authority. JW

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Holy Toledo - In another long boring meeting on innovation.

2013-02-05T12:15:00.001-08:00

In a long, long meeting thinking. If I were at the helm, I'd fire everyone but the girl at the front desk. I think she is the only one who gets it around here. This stuff isn't rocket science. Just fire all the consultants and middle managers to get down to accelerating customer expectations.
How can you truly be an innovative company if you and HR do your best to abolish the “revolutionaries, rebels, zany, weird, freaky, and “Hey boss this is a STUPID idea” people? Jim Woods

P.S. Human resources are the least innovative people in an organization with an opportunity to hire the most innovative people in an organization.
I have got a boatload more ideas here - at "Boatload of ideas."

Meg Whitman and HP's Woefully Inept Leadership - Ready. Aim. Layoff

2013-02-02T15:41:00.001-08:00

There is something woefully unsettling about a HP paying CEO Meg Whitman $15 million when said company failed to MAKE A PROFIT only to INCREASE REVENUES by laying off workers instead of “Invent. Reinvent. Repeat.”

Read Market Watch article on other HP executives who received enormous "performance based" compensation only for cutting costs by eliminating employees. Seems to be a recurring theme over the years for many companies. HP's motto was once the stuff of legend, "Invent. Reinvent. Repeat." No longer. How can a company of any kind expect loyalty and innovation from employees and customers when their only path to growth isn't innovation but rewarding executives whose only talent is reckless downsizing?

Oh, what a slippery slope boards and shareholders seek to climb without long term rewards. HP for example has a parade of CEO's with minuscule returns for years.

While this behavior isn’t new by any means, one would have expected HP to strive for a higher standard.

Employees build companies. Employee layoffs don’t require skill. Any idiot can subscribe to that low level of “leadership” and management. HP’s way forward Ms. Whitman remains in its motto: Invent. Reinvent. Repeat. JW

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Meg Whitman and HP's Woefully Inept Leadership - Ready. Aim. Layoff

2013-02-02T15:39:00.001-08:00

Oh, what a slippery slope boards and shareholders seek to climb without long term rewards. HP for example has a parade of CEO's with minuscule returns for years.

While this behavior isn’t new by any means, one would have expected HP to strive for a higher standard.

Like more information on Jim Woods and InnoThink Group Consultants click here.

Positive Attitude is Everything - Very Funny Attitude Video - Inspirational

2013-01-30T13:35:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Growth: The great innovation debate

2013-01-29T02:58:00.001-08:00

WITH the pace of technological change making heads spin, we tend to think of our age as the most innovative ever. We have smartphones and supercomputers, big data and nanotechnologies, gene therapy and stem-cell transplants. Governments, universities and firms together spend around $1.4 trillion a year on R&D, more than ever before.

Yet nobody recently has come up with an invention half as useful as that depicted on our cover. With its clean lines and intuitive user interface, the humble loo transformed the lives of billions of people. And it wasn’t just modern sanitation that sprang from late-19th and early-20th-century brains: they produced cars, planes, the telephone, radio and antibiotics.

Modern science has failed to make anything like the same impact, and this is why a growing band of thinkers claim that the pace of innovation has slowed (see article). Interestingly, the gloomsters include not just academics such as Robert Gordon, the American economist who offered the toilet test of uninventiveness, but also entrepreneurs such as Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist behind Facebook.

If the pessimists are right, the implications are huge. Economies can generate growth by adding more stuff: more workers, investment and education. But sustained increases in output per person, which are necessary to raise incomes and welfare, entail using the stuff we already have in better ways—innovating, in other words. If the rate at which we innovate, and spread that innovation, slows down, so too, other things being equal, will our growth rate.

Doom, gloom and productivity figures

Ever since Malthus forecast that we would all starve, human ingenuity has proved the prophets of doom wrong. But these days the impact of innovation does indeed seem to be tailing off. Life expectancy in America, for instance, has risen more slowly since 1980 than in the early 20th century. The speed of travel, in the rich world at least, is often slower now than it was a generation earlier, after rocketing a century or so ago. According to Mr Gordon, productivity also supports the pessimists’ case: it took off in the mid-19th century, accelerated in the early 20th century and held up pretty well until the early 1970s. It then dipped sharply, ticked up in late 1990s with computerisation and dipped again in the mid-2000s.

Yet that pattern is not as conclusively gloomy as the doomsayers claim. Life expectancy is still improving, even in the rich world (see article). The productivity gains after electrification came not smoothly, but in spurts; and the drop-off since 2004 probably has more to do with the economic crisis than with underlying lack of invention. Moreover, it is too early to write off the innovative impact of the present age.

This generation’s contribution to technological progress lies mostly in information technology (IT). Rather as electrification changed everything by allowing energy to be used far from where it was generated, computing and communications technologies transform lives and businesses by allowing people to make calculations and connections far beyond their unaided capacity. But as with electricity, companies will take time to learn how to use them, so it will probably be many decades before their full impact is felt.

Computing power is already contributing to dramatic advances far beyond the field of IT. Three-dimensional printing may cause a new industrial revolution. Autonomous vehicles, like the driverless cars produced by Google, could be common on streets within a decade. The performance of human prosthetics is rapidly catching up with that of natural limbs.

And although it is too soon to judge how big a deal these inventions will turn out to be, globalisation should make this a fruitful period for innovation. Many more brains are at work now than were 100 years ago: American and European inventors have been joined in the race to produce cool new stuff by Japanese, Brazilian, Indian and Chinese ones (see article).

Spend a penny—or two

So there are good reasons for thinking that the 21st century’s innovative juices will flow fast. But there are also reasons to watch out for impediments. The biggest danger is government.

When government was smaller, innovation was easier. Industrialists could introduce new processes or change a product’s design without a man from the ministry claiming some regulation had been broken. It is a good thing that these days pharmaceuticals are stringently tested and factory emissions controlled. But officialdom tends to write far more rules than are necessary for the public good; and thickets of red tape strangle innovation. Even many regulations designed to help innovation are not working well. The West’s intellectual-property system, for instance, is a mess, because it grants too many patents of dubious merit.

Continue the articel via economist.com

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Check Out These Really Really Out of The Box Powerful and Creative Ads - Branding and Marketing Innovation

2013-01-23T12:23:00.001-08:00

Check out this website I found at stumbleupon.com

Among Innovative Companies Virtuous Leadership Is The Difference

2013-01-21T02:01:00.001-08:00

Simply Profound

Saw a great quote about the obvious by Carol Hymowitz:

“Good governance depends primarily on leaders who put integrity and the interest of their companies ahead of their self-interests. These executives are willing to grapple with difficult decisions that may involve personal sacrifice.”

Which reminds me of the Hay Group Best Companies survey.

Hay Group's John Larrere said, "Rapid changes in the world are impacting how organizations do business, and as a result, the old rules of how organizations select, develop and retain good leaders have been turned upside down causing the future of leadership to look very different. ... It's about getting them (people) to be passionate about their work and grooming them to handle the challenges ahead."

These findings fall in line with those of Peter Drucker in the “The Effective Executive,” who highlight "Inspiring" and “Leaders have a commitment to community and to change lives.”

Jim Collins highlights - Their drive and passion isn’t about themselves. It’s about the work, the organization, the purpose. Their purpose isn’t just making money or increasing shareholder value. “You have to have a reason to struggle, a reason to endure,” and they are willing to do whatever it takes for the organization, within the bounds of their values."

The most effective leaders focus on people as well as profits. They treat employees as assets not commodities as in the Jack Welch management dictum fire the “C” players. The truly great leaders have figured out how to select, build, and maintain people's belief that they are being honestly and competently led in today's unpredictable business world. Jim

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Jim Woods is an expert on competitive strategy, uncertainty and innovation. Jim is president and CEO of InnoThink Group, a strategy and uncertainty consulting firm designed to maximize the potential of leaders and organizations. For more on Jim check out his website and follow him on Facebook.

For over 25 years Jim Woods has helped organizations and individuals achieve their goals, maximize their effectiveness, become more productive, develop confidence, and overcome the fears holding them back. Click here to schedule an appointment.

The Frustration of Innovation and Rhetoric

2013-01-17T11:21:00.001-08:00

I remain frustrated with my associates at the university and management consultants who see themselves as innovators yet are latched to the “tried and true” case profiles of best practices. Clients as well who seek “safe” methods of timid incrementalism. They have become talking heads absent of any original thoughts that could probably lessen their fees by simply asserting to clients and students “go thou and do likewise.

In a world of speed and uncertainty they suggest a slow incremental approach to radical change and innovation that worked well in conventional times of certainty absent of speed and technology. As Gary Hamel muses, “It was hard to find people within the world of management who were asking questions equivalent to what a computer scientist might ask: how do you build a machine that could think? Or that an engineer might ask: how do you master nano-scale manufacturing?"

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Leadership - Doing What You Say You Will Do

2013-01-16T00:34:00.001-08:00

DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WILL DO. We talk about DWYSYWD (pronounced "dwizzy-wid") in our seminars. One of our new clients reminded us of a tried-and-true way to communicate the same message:

· Is a pig's butt pork?

· Does a bear %&$# in the woods?

· Is the pope Catholic?

As a leader, manager, frontline supervisor, are you going to do what you say you are going to do?

YES!

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Post - Only 18% of Top CEOs Are on Social Networks

2013-01-15T10:46:00.001-08:00

via mashable.com

Secrets Of America's Happiest Companies | Fast Company

2013-01-14T05:55:00.001-08:00

“Being able to be truly happy at work is one of the keys to being happy in life,” says Heidi Golledge, CEO and cofounder of CareerBliss, an online career database. And what company couldn’t use a little more joy among its ranks?

In her book It’s Always Personal, Anne Kreamer points to recent research from Sigal Barsade of the Wharton School of Business that indicates positive moods prompt “more flexible decision-making and wider search behavior and greater analytic precision,” which in turn make the whole company more willing to take risks and be more open. On the flip side, analysis conducted by the Gallup Organization found that disgruntled employees disengage and cost the American economy up to $350 billion a year in lost productivity.

The 5 rules of happy employees.

Happy employees don’t stay in one role for too long. Movement and the perception of improvement create satisfaction. Status quo, on the other hand, creates burnout.

There is a strong correlation between happiness and meaning; having a meaningful impact on the world around you is actually a better predictor of happiness than many other things you think will make you happy.

A workplace is far likelier to be a happy place when policies are in place to ensure that people regularly get acknowledgement and praise for a job well done.

Recognize that employees are people first, workers second, and create policies that focus on their well-being as individuals.

Emphasize work/life integration, not necessarily "balance."

What exactly makes those staffers whistle while they work? CareerBliss just released its findings on the 50 happiest companies in America. The data, based on employee-submitted reviews, evaluated the key factors such as work-life balance, one’s relationship with his/her boss and coworkers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and job control over work performed on a daily basis. The answer to what makes a happy company is an amalgam of all these different factors, which might indicate that companies perceived as innovative would consistently snag the top spots. Not so. Apple and Google dropped from their top 10 spots down to #42 and #18, respectively. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer climbed from #11 to take the top slot, followed by NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Steve McClatchy, founder of Alleer Training and Consulting, whose client list includes top-ranked Pfizer, says a happy workplace is one that is committed to perpetual improvement, and not just as a line item on the balance sheet. “It’s one that supports employees in achieving goals, letting them fail, and learn from that,” he says. McClatchy believes happy employees don’t stay in one role for too long. “When there is movement in your life, there is satisfaction. Status quo is what creates burnout and ruts.” He says at companies such as Pfizer, staff achieves a balance between improvement, growth, and maintenance. Work burnout isn’t about too many hours spent on the job, he contends, it's about feelings that come from improvement, or lack thereof. McClatchy points out that Pfizer regularly checks in with staff through employee surveys. “It’s a commitment to finding out obstacles to being happy. They don’t wait for exit interviews; they are proactive and continually assess their culture.” McClatchy believes a happy workplace isn’t necessarily free of conflict, either. At Pfizer, he says, management addresses conflict constructively. “It’s not with discipline but an approach that is solution-oriented.”
Work burnout isn’t about too many hours spent on the job, it's about feelings that come from improvement, or lack thereof.
Another way to reduce grumblings is to cultivate a culture of mindfulness and meaning, according to Jennifer Aaker, General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. "New research shows there is a strong correlation between happiness and meaning--in fact, having a meaningful impact on the world around you is actually a better predictor of happiness than many other things you think will make you happy," Aaker says. "When we can cultivate mindfulness and meaning in all that we do, including our work, we have the opportunity to influence not only our own well-being, but also the well-being of our family, friends, coworkers, and wider community."

Steven Cowart, manager for Visual Display Systems at NASA, agrees.
“The projects I get to work on are incredibly interesting, challenging, and critical to the success of an experiment or mission. The research facilities are unparalleled in their capabilities and the accomplishments they've helped achieve. The tools we get to work with are the best. Our simulators and trainers are like "E" ticket rides at entertainment parks. Especially the centrifuges. We get to do things I would never have imagined had I not been hired here. Things that matter. Things that inspire people. Things that change our perception of our life on Earth and our place in the universe.”

Not surprisingly, another part of joy comes from a simple pat on the back. Globoforce, a software provider of social-recognition solutions, said 82% of employees it polled said that receiving recognition makes them more satisfied with their jobs. “A workplace is far likelier to be a happy place when policies are in place to ensure that people regularly get acknowledgement and praise for a job well done, and where people feel that their happiness at work matters to their employers,” says Gretchen Rubin, author of the best-selling Happiness Project.

Dana Stocks, head of HR for Philips North America, says that the company (ranked #25 on the CareerBliss survey) took this concept a step further to make recognition more personal. “Philips has come to understand that recognition for a job well done is often more meaningful when coming in the form of peer-to-peer acknowledgment than expected manager-to-peer rewards. As a result, Philips has put in place programs and ‘culture drivers’ that help individuals create a legacy that is meaningful and energizing, beyond cash bonuses or award vouchers,” he explains.

Two programs help to reach this goal. "We are Philips" is a peer-to-peer recognition program that highlights the accomplishments of fellow employees and how they are modeling the key values and behaviors. Three times per year, winners for each behavior are announced and then showcased throughout North America to inspire others to succeed. Stocks says Philips also uses social technologies to engage with employees like the app called Connect Us (available as a desktop app and for mobile devices) to unite its global workforce by sharing knowledge insights, collaborating, and publicly showing appreciation with Thanks badges. “Any employee can show personal recognition of colleagues’ achievements,” says Stocks. Virtual high fives are limited to five per week, and the boss gets looped in, too. “Managers of employees who receive a Thanks badge will be informed by email,” he adds.

As the director of happiness at Lamp Post Group, Shelley Prevost, PhD, contends that the happiest workplaces are the ones that seriously honor the humanity of their people. “When you ‘get’ that employees are human beings first and worker bees second, you say something about their worth. Companies with happily engaged employees laugh at the rules that are more about upholding policy than caring about the well-being of others. They hire people with a capacity to care for one another, foster connectedness at every level of the company, give an inspiring vision not laced with b.s. platitudes, but about real possibilities. You want to work in these places because they make you feel purposeful, connected, and valued.

That isn’t always tied to a paycheck. Staffing and recruiting agency Adecco ranked #16 on the CareerBliss survey, even though its average salary was in some cases up to $50,000 lower than the average paycheck at companies at the bottom of the list. “Our people have a tremendous pride in Adecco and what they do for a living," says Mark Eberly, senior vice president of human resources, Adecco Group North America. "Especially in this economy, knowing that you are in the business of putting people to work is extremely gratifying, which no doubt makes for happy employees.” David Adams, vice president of learning and development, Adecco Group North America, adds that the agency gives employees opportunities for growth and flexibility. “Our commitment to professional growth includes developmental and skills training for both colleagues and associates. Additionally, we offer flexibility, including the many choices available to our temporary associates as to the times and duration they can work.”

One thing to keep in mind, says Delivering Happiness at Work’s CEO James Key Lim, one of the first employees at Zappos, is that there is no one magic bullet to guarantee happiness in the workplace. “We talk about work/life integration instead of balance,” he explains, especially when a study found that 90% of people send email on the weekends. By aligning people with their passions both on the job and in the rest of their lives, Lim says companies stand a greater chance of cultivating happy employees. “From an organizational perspective this really takes time,” Lim says, and clear, co-owned values are a must, along with consistent checks to ensure that everyone stays aligned. “The annual review is dead,” he asserts, “Happiness is a daily journey.”

[Image: Flickr user Kris Krüg]

via fastcompany.com

Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization. On Twitter Jim is @hyperinnovation and @innothinkgroup

For over 25 years Jim Woods has helped organizations and individuals achieve their goals, maximize their effectiveness, become more productive, develop confidence, and overcome the fears holding them back. Click here to schedule an appointment.

Innovation and Creativity - Idea Challenges – you get what you give

2013-01-14T03:39:00.001-08:00

In contradiction to what many people think, Idea Challenges are not about getting, they are about giving. Your employees will not automatically start sharing great, useful and relevant ideas to your organisational needs. As an organisation, you must give a lot before you get anything at all. And I do not mean prizes or money.

In this blogpost I will describe a number of important elements that you must give attention to when doing an ‘Idea Challenge’ amongst your employees. The extend to how much attention you give each of the elements, is a strong determinant for your initiative’s success.

Give support: Senior management The first thing you should have covered when starting an Idea Challenge is to have the support from senior management or equivalent. If your CEO does not agree with this new method of gathering ideas or the fact that all employees will be spending some time on this activity, you are very likely not going to succeed. If you can get senior management to endorse the initiative to all employees, you are half way to a successful Challenge.

Give a reason: Relevant Challenge theme When your organisation starts an Idea Challenge, you will get a lot of input from your crowd. Therefore you should always have a good reason to start an Idea Challenge in order for the input to be useful. Do not start a Challenge simply because your competitor is doing one amongst its employees too. You will have to give your crowd a good reason why you are looking for ideas and how these will help everyone. Relevant themes for Idea Challenges are typically deducted from your innovation domains or your organisation’s strategic goals.

Give a promise: Challenge sponsorship When asking your employees for ideas, there must be someone requesting the ideas; this is the Challenge sponsor. The Challenge sponsor must promise that the crowd’s efforts will not be for nothing and that the ideas will all be taken seriously and some will be further developed. The best way to do this is to show trust in the crowd by already stating in advance that budget will be allocated and the best idea(s) will be further developed.

Give information: Challenge information Somewhere during the process you will need to inform the crowd what the challenge is about, what you are and what you are not looking for, what the overall process will be like, how ideas will be evaluated etc. By communicating all these steps in advance will give the crowd confidence that this time, they are being taken seriously. If these aspects are not communicated clearly, or your crowd does not have enough information on what you are looking for, you will not only get many irrelevant and useless ideas you will also disappoint your crowd by not using their input eventually. The Challenge question is the element that will be communicated mostly throughout the crowd. This question must be triggering for people to be willing to participate, it must be broad to allow for diversity of ideas but not to broad to spark irrelevant and useless ideas.

Give an example: Supporting Challenge team The Challenge team is there to streamline dialogues, activate the crowd and stimulate the growth of ideas. They are an essential element in the success of an Idea Challenge. They take the role of the first follower in order to stimulate activity to the tipping point for Challenge participation as well as idea enrichment.

Give a tool: User-friendly and intuitive software Obviously you must have a tool in place on which your crowd will be sharing their ideas and knowledge with each other. Giving your crowd a user-friendly and intuitive platform will lower the barrier for participation and increase participation and will raise the number of ideas. The more people you have participating in the Idea Challenge, the more valuable it can become. Well designed ideation tools should allow everyone within your target group to participate without obstacles. Well designed software should not only support high quantity of ideas by lowering participation barriers but also support increasing the quality of ideas. Idea Challenge software suggests other contributors to ideas and allows for active crowd management. A low barrier of participation and high user involvement will be another step forward to a successful outcome.

Give arguments: Idea evaluation An important element of the idea Challenge is to evaluate all the ideas based upon predetermined criteria. Because you presumably cannot develop all the ideas that arose from the Challenge, you will need to make a well-founded decision on which ideas to pursue and which ideas are going to be put on the shelve. Without sensible arguments on why certain ideas go through to the next phase and why others don’t, you will loose the crowd’s moral and motivation for upcoming initiatives so be clear and transparent in this step.

Give action: Follow up of ideas Your employees have been putting a lot of effort in their contributions. Your crowd has been very dedicated and they have not only kept to working hours. They have been active during the week, but they might have also submitted ideas late at night and enriched other’s ideas during the weekend. Therefore you must always give a lot of attention following up the ideas.

Give a story: Communication One of the most important elements is a solid communication plan. It endorses many of the above mentioned elements. A well thought through and executed communication plan will play a major role in making the Idea Challenge a success.

Get your success If all of the above elements are given enough attention and you have a dedicated and enthusiastic team, chances are high you will get a successful Idea Challenge. You will probably not only get many great and useful ideas but you will also get a lot of highly motivated employees who are feeling part of the innovation process and taken seriously. You have just created a sustainable crowd, one that you have earned the favor of asking them for input on more challenges.

image credit: Jan Martijn Everts

Jan Martijn Everts is Innovation Consultant @ Innovation Factory in the Netherlands. Jan Martijn has worked on a variety of projects, ranging from Heineken’s annual idea contests to PostNL’s ongoing innovation programme. Due to his uncommon background of both Engineering Physics and Business Administration he has great association skills,

via innovationexcellence.com

Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization. On Twitter Jim is @hyperinnovation and @innothinkgroup

9 lessons on persuasion from a preschooler

2013-01-13T11:19:00.001-08:00

Right up front, we’re shooting out the disclaimer that whining and throwing a temper tantrum are not part of this list, so if that’s what you were expecting, we hate to disappoint you, but there are times when you might feel it’s come to that if you’re not garnering the online audience for which you were hoping.

Whether it’s sales or readers you’re looking to score, there are helpful lessons to be learned from the wee ones as Jarom Adair at Copyblogger learned when he started closely studying the seemingly limitless persuasive powers of his four-year-old, Elijah.

1. The art of the ask

Despite repeatedly assuring Elijah that he would not find cake at the hardware store during a recent trip, Elijah approached an employee anyway and asked, “Do you have cake?”

Instead of turning him away, the employee led us to the employee lounge where, coincidentally, someone had just celebrated a birthday.

They happily gave Elijah a large slice of birthday cake, and I relearned one of the most basic lessons of persuasion.

Persuasive Tip #1: You’ve got to ask for what you want, or you’ll never persuade anybody to do anything.

And just like asking for cake in a hardware store, there are two common places most writers often don’t think to ask for what they want. They are:

#1 Ask at the end of your article — Any time you’ve given someone something of value (like an informative article on your site), this is a great time to give people a gentle nudge to join your email list or look further into a service or product you offer.

#2 Ask again after they’ve taken action — If someone has just taken action — like joined your email list or purchased something — immediately invite them to take more action. They have action-taking momentum, and it’s a great time to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Full story at Copyblogger.

Tips on writing.

Photo credit: Annie Colbert

via holykaw.alltop.com

The Most Misunderstood Aspects of Leadership

2013-01-06T12:10:00.001-08:00

I speak frequently on the subject of leadership and rarely get the question on what's new and trendy but rather what's effective. I like what you mentioned about leaders make others think the sun will come up the next day. I believe the most effective leaders are those that by example paint a picture of reality that helps others to achieve their dreams, advance their goals, and see themselves as an integral part of forward progress especially when they are in a situation of uncertainty or uncomfort.

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via excellenceininnovationblog.posterous.com

There are always opportunities for innovation

2012-12-21T01:07:00.001-08:00

These days, if you follow the news, it is a lot of doom and gloom. Hurricane Sandy, earthquakes, Syrian war, rising numbers of unemployment etc. It is easy to be influenced by this kind of news. Therefor I do recommend spending a minimal amount of time following this negative news. And then you can use the ‘extra’ time to discover inspiring news. There are many blogs, videos, and podcasts, articles that emphasize positive and innovative news.

These circumstances provide a good breeding ground for new innovations. Please bear in mind that most innovations start at the edge and not at the center of most activities. It is hard to be innovative if you follow the pack. For example, I just listened to an interview with someone from Aurora pens and he said that the focus on standardization (in his case pc’s tablets, phones) gives him the opportunity to specialize in a niche area (nice writing instruments). He even mentioned a research that some schools in Italy are having their kids use fountain pens, as this improves their learning capability!

It is an interesting approach to do the opposite of what is at the center, e.g.

Center                                                           Edge

- standardization                                           - tailoring

- fashion colors are mild                                - colors are extreme

- eat as much as you can                               - eat as healthy as you can

- attain more goods                                       - have great experiences

- use plastics                                                 - use natural materials

You can go on and on with this approach. And it works, there are always customers who want to feel special and who have special needs. It is also easier to be successful at the edge than trying to innovate from the core. via arnoldbeekes.blogspot.com

Jim Woods is President and CEO of InnoThink Group, a strategy and uncertainty consulting firm designed to maximize the potential of leaders and organizations. For more on Jim check out his website and follow him on Facebook.

We solve problems. Helping companies identify, develop, and implement winning strategies, offering support and capability building at every stage of the strategic journey.

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Rejection Breeds Creativity & Innovation

2012-12-21T00:55:00.001-08:00

New research from Johns Hopkins University suggests that having our ideas rejected tends to boost our creativity output. Sharon Kim and her colleagues found that when most of us experience rejection, it can actually enhance our creativity, depending on how we respond to it. The paper, titled “Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought?” was recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Experimental Psychology. It also received a best-paper award at the Academy of Management (AOM) conference held this month in Boston.

As reported by Behance:

In the first experiment, participants were given a series of personality questions and told they would be considered for participation in several group exercises in the future. When the participants returned to the laboratory a week later, some of them were asked to complete a few tasks before joining their group (inclusion), others were told that none of the groups had chosen them and they would need to complete their tasks independently (rejection). When they calculated the results, the researchers found that "rejected" participants significantly outperformed those that were included in a group. Consider the difference between those who respond to rejection by sulking versus those who respond by rolling up their sleeves and thinking "I'll show them."

The results were conclusive: rejection breeds creativity, especially for those who consider themselves highly independent. In final a follow-up study, the researchers found the same trend using a different measurement of creativity.

For practitioners, how can this phenomena work to your advantage? When managing individuals or teams, the time will come when you have to say 'no'. In that moment immediately after rejecting a person's viewpoint, you want to let it sink. Don't try to minimize the impact by rationalizing the decision or by other means of making the person feel better. But the key is to assign the rejected person right away to a new and important task. Put them on a project where they can prove themselves and "get even." You want to let their creative juices flow.

"While it is never a comfortable experience, the feelings of rejection can actually help us access our more creative selves. Free from the expectations of group norms, we can push the limits of novelty. Moreover, we can enhance that ability by changing the way we respond to rejection. Instead of dwelling too much on the pain of being turned down or turned aside, consider the freedom you now have to explore new possibilities and less mainstream options." via innovationinpractice.com

We solve problems. Helping companies identify, develop, and implement winning strategies, offering support and capability building at every stage of the strategic journey.

Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization.

Why Hospitals Fail To Deliver Great Service

2012-12-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

Hospitals try to deliver the best health outcomes. That's a given. But many also aim to deliver high levels of customer service. On that latter goal, healthcare systems are falling short. Here's why: Truly improving service demands a culture that intentionally champions a focus on the patient.

Managers must be equipped to drive employee engagement in their departments.
What healthcare systems urgently need are clear intentions and strategies at the leadership level. These will determine whether a service mindset can exist within a hospital. What's more, getting employees engaged and connected to this mission will ultimately determine whether they live out that mindset each day.
Gallup has found that a service-centered culture requires:

a committed leadership team that champions a philosophy that is aligned with service

employee commitment to providing outstanding service and quality

the strategic alignment of the organization's plan, policies, and procedures with the goal of being service-focused

an established process to document and disseminate organizational knowledge and efficiencies

an ongoing commitment to improving performance and using proven tactics

It's difficult to execute any vision for change in a service-oriented industry -- even when leaders clearly communicate it to the organization -- without an engaged and motivated workforce. Healthcare systems with a strong service-oriented culture recruit and hire people who fit that culture and begin sharing the vision during the recruitment phase and through orientation and onboarding.

A healthcare system must implement regular feedback mechanisms in the early stages of a healthcare professional's tenure. The organization should check in with new hires after 30, 60, and 90 days, using these opportunities to assess whether the recruit is adapting to and thriving in the organization's culture. The healthcare system should also continue to provide ongoing training and development, giving refresher courses about the vision and culture every 12 to 18 months. With leadership's support, these engaged employees become ambassadors for the patients' priorities.

After proper onboarding, a healthcare system must align its human resources policies to encourage service excellence and hold employees accountable to the standards. Managers must be equipped to drive employee engagement in their departments and held accountable for action planning and knowledge sharing. Aligning these activities with the hospital's larger strategic plan and organization-wide goals is crucial and should be transparent from leadership down to the front line. One of the greatest challenges in any modern and multi-location system is that pockets of excellence exist, but best practices are rarely shared across units. Maintaining open and intentionally structured communication is a means to spread great customer service across an organization.
As in other service-based industries, consistency is key. A patient may interact with many areas of a hospital over the course of an inpatient stay, a series of tests, or a surgery. Receiving fantastic service in one area and mediocre service from another lowers a patient's perception of the overall experience he or she has had.

Finally, every hospital must have a built-in mechanism for improving performance. Building performance improvement teams and using the Plan, Do, Check, Act model can help ensure that performance improvement is an understood and respected part of the culture. via businessjournal.gallup.com

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Jim Woods is principal and founder of InnoThink Group. Jim is a business turnaround expert. He has worked with government, U.S. Army, MITRE Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Whirlpool, and 3M. Jim W experiences, extensive research on competitive strategy and innovation have given him a fresh perspective on improving individual and organizational performance. Jim is a prolific speaker on strategic innovation, creative leadership, uncertainty and competitive strategy. Speak with us for consulting or speaking engagements call 719-266-6703 or click here for more information. Follow Jim on Twitter. Follow Jim on Facebook.

10 Principles of Change Management and Innovation for Dummies

2012-12-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy allthingslearning
Way back when (pick your date), senior executives in large companies had a simple goal for themselves and their organizations: stability. Shareholders wanted little more than predictable earnings growth. Because so many markets were either closed or undeveloped, leaders could deliver on those expectations through annual exercises that offered only modest modifications to the strategic plan. Prices stayed in check; people stayed in their jobs; life was good.
Market transparency, labor mobility, global capital flows, and instantaneous communications have blown that comfortable scenario to smithereens. In most industries — and in almost all companies, from giants on down — heightened global competition has concentrated management’s collective mind on something that, in the past, it happily avoided: change. Successful companies, as Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter told s+b in 1999, develop “a culture that just keeps moving all the time.”
This presents most senior executives with an unfamiliar challenge. In major transformations of large enterprises, they and their advisors conventionally focus their attention on devising the best strategic and tactical plans. But to succeed, they also must have an intimate understanding of the human side of change management — the alignment of the company’s culture, values, people, and behaviors — to encourage the desired results. Plans themselves do not capture value; value is realized only through the sustained, collective actions of the thousands — perhaps the tens of thousands — of employees who are responsible for designing, executing, and living with the changed environment.
Long-term structural transformation has four characteristics: scale (the change affects all or most of the organization), magnitude (it involves significant alterations of the status quo), duration (it lasts for months, if not years), and strategic importance. Yet companies will reap the rewards only when change occurs at the level of the individual employee.
Many senior executives know this and worry about it. When asked what keeps them up at night, CEOs involved in transformation often say they are concerned about how the work force will react, how they can get their team to work together, and how they will be able to lead their people. They also worry about retaining their company’s unique values and sense of identity and about creating a culture of commitment and performance. Leadership teams that fail to plan for the human side of change often find themselves wondering why their best-laid plans have gone awry.
No single methodology fits every company, but there is a set of practices, tools, and techniques that can be adapted to a variety of situations. What follows is a “Top 10” list of guiding principles for change management. Using these as a systematic, comprehensive framework, executives can understand what to expect, how to manage their own personal change, and how to engage the entire organization in the process.
1. Address the “human side” systematically. Any significant transformation creates “people issues.” New leaders will be asked to step up, jobs will be changed, new skills and capabilities must be developed, and employees will be uncertain and resistant. Dealing with these issues on a reactive, case-by-case basis puts speed, morale, and results at risk. A formal approach for managing change — beginning with the leadership team and then engaging key stakeholders and leaders — should be developed early, and adapted often as change moves through the organization. This demands as much data collection and analysis, planning, and implementation discipline as does a redesign of strategy, systems, or processes. The change-management approach should be fully integrated into program design and decision making, both informing and enabling strategic direction. It should be based on a realistic assessment of the organization’s history, readiness, and capacity to change.
2. Start at the top. Because change is inherently unsettling for people at all levels of an organization, when it is on the horizon, all eyes will turn to the CEO and the leadership team for strength, support, and direction. The leaders themselves must embrace the new approaches first, both to challenge and to motivate the rest of the institution. They must speak with one voice and model the desired behaviors. The executive team also needs to understand that, although its public face may be one of unity, it, too, is composed of individuals who are going through stressful times and need to be supported.
Executive teams that work well together are best positioned for success. They are aligned and committed to the direction of change, understand the culture and behaviors the changes intend to introduce, and can model those changes themselves. At one large transportation company, the senior team rolled out an initiative to improve the efficiency and performance of its corporate and field staff before addressing change issues at the officer level. The initiative realized initial cost savings but stalled as employees began to question the leadership team’s vision and commitment. Only after the leadership team went through the process of aligning and committing to the change initiative was the work force able to deliver downstream results.
3. Involve every layer. As transformation programs progress from defining strategy and setting targets to design and implementation, they affect different levels of the organization. Change efforts must include plans for identifying leaders throughout the company and pushing responsibility for design and implementation down, so that change “cascades” through the organization. At each layer of the organization, the leaders who are identified and trained must be aligned to the company’s vision, equipped to execute their specific mission, and motivated to make change happen.
A major multiline insurer with consistently flat earnings decided to change performance and behavior in preparation for going public. The company followed this “cascading leadership” methodology, training and supporting teams at each stage. First, 10 officers set the strategy, vision, and targets. Next, more than 60 senior executives and managers designed the core of the change initiative. Then 500 leaders from the field drove implementation. The structure remained in place throughout the change program, which doubled the company’s earnings far ahead of schedule. This approach is also a superb way for a company to identify its next generation of leadership.
4. Make the formal case. Individuals are inherently rational and will question to what extent change is needed, whether the company is headed in the right direction, and whether they want to commit personally to making change happen. They will look to the leadership for answers. The articulation of a formal case for change and the creation of a written vision statement are invaluable opportunities to create or compel leadership-team alignment.
Three steps should be followed in developing the case: First, confront reality and articulate a convincing need for change. Second, demonstrate faith that the company has a viable future and the leadership to get there. Finally, provide a road map to guide behavior and decision making. Leaders must then customize this message for various internal audiences, describing the pending change in terms that matter to the individuals.
A consumer packaged-goods company experiencing years of steadily declining earnings determined that it needed to significantly restructure its operations — instituting, among other things, a 30 percent work force reduction — to remain competitive. In a series of offsite meetings, the executive team built a brutally honest business case that downsizing was the only way to keep the business viable, and drew on the company’s proud heritage to craft a compelling vision to lead the company forward. By confronting reality and helping employees understand the necessity for change, leaders were able to motivate the organization to follow the new direction in the midst of the largest downsizing in the company’s history. Instead of being shell-shocked and demoralized, those who stayed felt a renewed resolve to help the enterprise advance.
5. Create ownership. Leaders of large change programs must overperform during the transformation and be the zealots who create a critical mass among the work force in favor of change. This requires more than mere buy-in or passive agreement that the direction of change is acceptable. It demands ownership by leaders willing to accept responsibility for making change happen in all of the areas they influence or control. Ownership is often best created by involving people in identifying problems and crafting solutions. It is reinforced by incentives and rewards. These can be tangible (for example, financial compensation) or psychological (for example, camaraderie and a sense of shared destiny).
At a large health-care organization that was moving to a shared-services model for administrative support, the first department to create detailed designs for the new organization was human resources. Its personnel worked with advisors in cross-functional teams for more than six months. But as the designs were being finalized, top departmental executives began to resist the move to implementation. While agreeing that the work was top-notch, the executives realized they hadn’t invested enough individual time in the design process to feel the ownership required to begin implementation. On the basis of their feedback, the process was modified to include a “deep dive.” The departmental executives worked with the design teams to learn more, and get further exposure to changes that would occur. This was the turning point; the transition then happened quickly. It also created a forum for top executives to work as a team, creating a sense of alignment and unity that the group hadn’t felt before.
6. Communicate the message. Too often, change leaders make the mistake of believing that others understand the issues, feel the need to change, and see the new direction as clearly as they do. The best change programs reinforce core messages through regular, timely advice that is both inspirational and practicable. Communications flow in from the bottom and out from the top, and are targeted to provide employees the right information at the right time and to solicit their input and feedback. Often this will require overcommunication through multiple, redundant channels.
In the late 1990s, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Charles O. Rossotti, had a vision: The IRS could treat taxpayers as customers and turn a feared bureaucracy into a world-class service organization. Getting more than 100,000 employees to think and act differently required more than just systems redesign and process change. IRS leadership designed and executed an ambitious communications program including daily voice mails from the commissioner and his top staff, training sessions, videotapes, newsletters, and town hall meetings that continued through the transformation. Timely, constant, practical communication was at the heart of the program, which brought the IRS’s customer ratings from the lowest in various surveys to its current ranking above the likes of McDonald’s and most airlines.
7. Assess the cultural landscape. Successful change programs pick up speed and intensity as they cascade down, making it critically important that leaders understand and account for culture and behaviors at each level of the organization. Companies often make the mistake of assessing culture either too late or not at all. Thorough cultural diagnostics can assess organizational readiness to change, bring major problems to the surface, identify conflicts, and define factors that can recognize and influence sources of leadership and resistance. These diagnostics identify the core values, beliefs, behaviors, and perceptions that must be taken into account for successful change to occur. They serve as the common baseline for designing essential change elements, such as the new corporate vision, and building the infrastructure and programs needed to drive change.
8. Address culture explicitly. Once the culture is understood, it should be addressed as thoroughly as any other area in a change program. Leaders should be explicit about the culture and underlying behaviors that will best support the new way of doing business, and find opportunities to model and reward those behaviors. This requires developing a baseline, defining an explicit end-state or desired culture, and devising detailed plans to make the transition.
Company culture is an amalgam of shared history, explicit values and beliefs, and common attitudes and behaviors. Change programs can involve creating a culture (in new companies or those built through multiple acquisitions), combining cultures (in mergers or acquisitions of large companies), or reinforcing cultures (in, say, long-established consumer goods or manufacturing companies). Understanding that all companies have a cultural center — the locus of thought, activity, influence, or personal identification — is often an effective way to jump-start culture change.
A consumer goods company with a suite of premium brands determined that business realities demanded a greater focus on profitability and bottom-line accountability. In addition to redesigning metrics and incentives, it developed a plan to systematically change the company’s culture, beginning with marketing, the company’s historical center. It brought the marketing staff into the process early to create enthusiasts for the new philosophy who adapted marketing campaigns, spending plans, and incentive programs to be more accountable. Seeing these culture leaders grab onto the new program, the rest of the company quickly fell in line.
9. Prepare for the unexpected. No change program goes completely according to plan. People react in unexpected ways; areas of anticipated resistance fall away; and the external environment shifts. Effectively managing change requires continual reassessment of its impact and the organization’s willingness and ability to adopt the next wave of transformation. Fed by real data from the field and supported by information and solid decision-making processes, change leaders can then make the adjustments necessary to maintain momentum and drive results.
A leading U.S. health-care company was facing competitive and financial pressures from its inability to react to changes in the marketplace. A diagnosis revealed shortcomings in its organizational structure and governance, and the company decided to implement a new operating model. In the midst of detailed design, a new CEO and leadership team took over. The new team was initially skeptical, but was ultimately convinced that a solid case for change, grounded in facts and supported by the organization at large, existed. Some adjustments were made to the speed and sequence of implementation, but the fundamentals of the new operating model remained unchanged.
10. Speak to the individual. Change is both an institutional journey and a very personal one. People spend many hours each week at work; many think of their colleagues as a second family. Individuals (or teams of individuals) need to know how their work will change, what is expected of them during and after the change program, how they will be measured, and what success or failure will mean for them and those around them. Team leaders should be as honest and explicit as possible. People will react to what they see and hear around them, and need to be involved in the change process. Highly visible rewards, such as promotion, recognition, and bonuses, should be provided as dramatic reinforcement for embracing change. Sanction or removal of people standing in the way of change will reinforce the institution’s commitment.
Most leaders contemplating change know that people matter. It is all too tempting, however, to dwell on the plans and processes, which don’t talk back and don’t respond emotionally, rather than face up to the more difficult and more critical human issues. But mastering the “soft” side of change management needn’t be a mystery. via strategy-business.com

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