On a recent vacation, I immersed myself in Joseph's latest book: Join The Conversation. While I found the entire book informative, relevant, inspirational and educational, I really related a great deal to the content in Chapter 18. Two portions of the chapter really resonated with me. The first was the summary of 30 reasons for defending the status quo. I certainly have heard many of them throughout my career. I have also heard some I would suggest should be added to the list. My additions reflect the fact that I worked for nothing but very large (FORTUNE 50), hierarchical and quite siloed companies and may not be relevant for smaller companies. That said, here are my suggested additions based on real life experiences of mine:
- "We tried that before and it didn't work"
- "That might work for selling packaged goods, but don't you understand we're selling investments"
- "This might be a good idea for the entire corporation, but the ROI for my division can't justify the investment"
- "I am not willing to take money out of traditional media to experiment with unproven new marketing approaches"
- "With our current focus on (fill in the blank here e.g. merger integration, budget cuts, organization changes, etc.) we don't have the bandwidth to do experimentation"
The second portion of this chapter that got my attention was the section entitled: "Making Experimentation A Reality: A Five Step Plan." During my last two years at Wachovia, I spent a great deal of time studying the subject of innovation. Researching best practices approaches from the leaders in innovation in order to make a recommendation for a model that would serve to drive innovation at Wachovia. Ar the end of this study, we made a series of recommendations to the Operating Committee (just one year ago). The recommendations were accepted and have since been implemented.
What struck me was the dead-on alignment between Joseph's recommendations and ours. It is important to note, upfront, that our recommendations were strongly influenced by our desire to come up with a solution that took into account Wachovia's culture, history and structural makeup. Clearly "one size" does not fit all when looking for the right organizational approach and these elements need to be strongly factored in. Here's where our findings aligned with Joseph's:
- Separated, nimble teams reporting straight to the top - in a large corporation made up of numerous business units, the big innovative ideas will be those that have enterprise-wide value. Placing the innovation teams within business unit immediately suboptimizes the potential for developing big ideas.
- Mash up of internal and external specialists - exactly what we recommended. This level of diversity is essential in driving true innovation.
- Experimentation team reports to Chief Marketing Officer - Yup, recommended this as well.
- Experimentation team is separate yet connected - this was a very key element of our recommendation. For reasons stated above, it is very important for this group to be a separate, cross-enterprise-focused group. However, in a company like Wachovia, where the revenue producing lines of business drive strategy and business results, it is critical to have very strong connections with each line of business.
The remainder of the chapter contains further suggestions that also align very well with our recommendations - especially the section that deals with being tolerant of failure. This is a challenge for companies that are traditionally quite risk intolerant, but this significant obstacle to innovation needs to be overcome. We recommended an approach that would involve "failing fast, celebrating failures and learning from them."
One key element in our recommendation I didn't see in Joseph's book was something we referred to as "an idea management system." Fact is most companies have many, many creative people who have numerous excellent innovative ideas. The problem is that they don't know where to go with those ideas. Best practices companies have an idea management system. This includes a visible center for innovation that welcomes innovative ideas from all employees (and other constituencies) irrespective of title, level or tenure. The second element is a well defined and maintained system that continually manages the corporate inventory of innovation ideas - those that have been implemented, those in the pipeline, those in consideration, etc. etc. etc.
In closing, I found great comfort in these congruencies between Joseph's suggested approach and our conclusions at Wachovia. We never thought we had invented something unique, and therefore I have no concerns about the fact that the two approaches are so similar. After all, we started out studying best practices companies looking to plagerize as much as possible.
- Jim Garrity
