Managing Change Successfully – a case study #cipd11

Managing Change Successfully

One of the sessions at this year’s #cipd11 annual conference was led by GSK, looking at the approach they took to transforming their organisation.

As many people know, the pharmaceutical industry (like many others) has over the last few years had to radically change some of their working practices and approaches. GSK was no exception.

Like many industries the culture and business climate that GSK is/ was operating within was changing. Customers and purchasers were changing their expectations.

For change to be effective, the team knew that it was not the launch of any change that was critical, but how to embed and ensure the initiatives around change actually “landed” fully in the business units.

Three Key Levers

To help drive the change, GSK identified three key levers:

1. Talent agenda
2. Change framework
3. Leadership framework

All of these were to be supported through the development of resilience in the business, developing HR capability and identifying appropriate measures. Not just end point, but transitional ones.

Change at multiple levels

For the change to happen, the leadership recognised that not only was the environment in which they were operating having to change (i.e. new markets, changing existing ones), but the way the organisation responded and adapted was vital. The metaphor they used was they described themselves as an “oil tanker” operating in a stormy sea, what they needs to do was transform from an oil tanker to an agile yacht, and be able to cope with both a rough and stormy environment as well as calm seas.

Agility is key

To achieve the organisational goals it was recognised that the monolithic approach was no longer sustainable. The organization at all levels needs to become more agile. To help achieve this, a program with the aim of “building change capability” was developed. This was a fusion of Organizational Development OD, LEAN and Project management. The goal was to streamline the “lab to Industrial scale process.

Renewing the senior talent pool

Part of this process involved looking at the top 200. The managed to create near to 100% movement in the top 200 population. This was achieved through a blend of internal transitions and external appointments. Retention was an important driver. Development of this and other key groups was fundamental and the GSK leadership development framework, was one of the development tools to support the transition

GSK Leadership Development Framework

This framework comprised: Managing self, Leading others, Leading managers, leading leaders to lead the enterprise.

This development program was said to be

• 70% on-the-job development through:
• “challenging self”
• 360 feedback
• expanded job responsibilities
• projects and
• job rotations/ assignments
•  20% developmental relationships:
• Mentoring
• Coaching
• Associations, networks and advisory positions
•  10% Formal development
• Self directed learning
• Course and programmes

Measures

Using the “keep it short & simple” approach measures initially in the transition were quantitative rather than qualitative. For example “Do you hole quarterly talent reviews?” and “Do you have ‘ready now’ successors?”. These and other simple dashboard indicators were used to measure “embedding” the process rather than more complex and time consuming measures.

HR Development

As part of the change, HR teams also needed to be developed to accommodate many of the changes. Much of this was driven through a survey of 300+ senior leaders which provided a focus on three themes:

1. Improve HR effectiveness in building capacity, talent mgt, change mgt, leadership development and strategic recruitment
2. Evolve the operating model to simplify and improve the service
3. Upgrade and enhance HR capabilities

Summary of learning from the process

HR and senior leaders all gained a lot from the changes to these processes, some of the key learning points the organization is looking to embed further include:

• The importance of moving away from projects to sustainable change
• Execution is the new strategic and embedded is the new ‘sexy’
• Everything is an OD intervention – it’s important to leverage the whole not the part
• Create agitators – enterprise leaders, and leaders developing leaders
• HR needs to be a courageous leader

This is one in a series of articles outlining some of the talks at this years #cipd annual conferenec for HR professionals in the UK and internationally.

If you are a CIPD member

Why training does not work

There is more to training than training…

The other evening while on the way home from some client work, I read the paper on the train. In this was an interesting article that suggested that public transport staff should be given “civility” training by one of the UKs top retailers for customer service – John Lewis.

The article cited that London has high levels of “incivility” and blamed it on the time people travel to and from work. The recommendation was that transport staff should improve their politeness to counter the “daily abrasiveness” that commuters face.

Now having commuted regularly for the first time in several years I know what the author means about the attitude of travellers, however in the same paper (Evening Standard 10 Oct 2011) there was another article educating commuters on how to get a train seat and using the strategy of military tactics to secure the seat ahead of fellow commuters!

 

 

The reality

There are several factors here:

1)      you cannot change the behaviour of millions of people by training just a few 100

2)      training in “politeness” is not the answer, it’s a cultural thing and its up to managers not staff to initiate this.

Looking at each point in turn.

Why are people “impolite”?

• Commuters are packed like sardines,
• They pay a lot of money for the “privilege”,
• The journeys are often long and involve one or more changes.
• Their goal is simple – get to work in as shorter time as is practicable,
• Travel in a “stress free” way. This to them means as few interactions as they can. Stressed people interacting with stressed people increases stress.

Will training work?

The John Lewis Partnership is well known in the UK for its customer orientated approach to business. Sure their training for their staff is wonderful… but the training has been designed to fit in the culture of a management style and service philosophy aligned to serving the customer.

The transport network on the other hand is not about customer service, it is about “service provision” – trains or busses… not individual customers. Staff are managed in a union environment that is focused on the avoidance of problems from managers for the greatest salary in a safe way – nothing about the day to day customer experience. Deep down most staff want to give “good service” however in a fast paced crowd based environment they do not have time or the space to offer a personalised service other than on an “exception” based approach. Training will do little to change each individual and the way they work on a day to day basis. The only people that can do this are the managers and supervisors. They need both awareness that developing a culture of politeness and calmness is important and for the organisations to develop key performance indicators to support the development and encouragement of this “new” culture.

Individual training just does not work for this type of behaviour change in this culture.

Training is not the universal solution, however development of competent managers that have the skills to align behaviour to stated organisational goals and objectives is key. Only poor managers and ineffective leaders hide behind training as the solution for cultural based organizational challenges.

Innovation – new or coming of time?

Innovation the missed management element?

While looking at some references for a post on objectives and objective setting, I discovered an interesting entry by Drucker in his seminal work “The Practice Of Management”.

In my version (p53 1963 Mercury books ) Drucker identifies eight areas for an organisation to have strategic objectives (in this order):

1. Market standing
2. Innovation
3. Productivity
4. Physical & financial resources
5. Profitability
6. Manager performance & development
7. Worker performance & attitude
8. Public responsibility

 

Given that this was written in 1955 some 55 years ago, if I had seen this in a publication new this year I would not be surprised. The only real changes we would see today is Worker=Employee and Public Responsibility=Corporate Social Responsibility.

Interesting, so why in the last 50+ years have we in the main ignored Innovation and Public Responsibility as primary developmental areas? Sure there have been many firms that have embraced these – but many business improvement tools and strategies look to incremental change rather than innovation and innovation in terms of research and development rather then management practices.

Drucker takes this further. In his book he sets out what should be covered by these eight objective areas. What he says about innovation is especially enlightening:

“There are two kinds of innovation in every business: innovation in product or service and innovation in the various skills and activities needed to supply them. Innovation may arise out of the needs of the market and customer; necessity may be the mother of innovation. ….. management must not forget that innovation is a slow process. Many companies owe their position of leadership today to the activity of a generation that went to its reward twenty-five years or so ago. many companies that are unknown to the public will be leaders in their industry tomorrow because of their innovations today” (p59)

Drucker realised that there were two areas where organisations could innovate – product and process. If you Google “Innovation” you get over 100M results. Scroll down these results and many focus on product or technology. Nothing wrong with that but its not where 95% of your employees operate. We need to look at the factors which we can engage the majority of our work force and look to make changes and improvements across the whole of our organisation.

In the current economic climate the saying “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got” – true for interpersonal relationships and actions, but this statement does not hold true for business and market share. We now need to focus on innovation as a management behaviour and skills as well as a product development process. We need to look at the innovative capacity of our people.

What are you doing in your organisation to improve the innovative capacity of your structures, people and culture? In much the same way that Meredith Belbin identified different team working behaviours and preferred styles of working, and suggested that the best performing teams were those that contained a balance of different styles, so it is with innovation. For a team to be effective and innovative over the long term, it is important that a balanced range of behavioural approaches are present.

How innovative is your organisation?

You may like to reflect on what innovation projects and actions are you involved in at the moment? And do you have a balanced team that can contribute to the various phases required of the innovation process?

1. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your organisation’s ability to generate or recognise good ideas (1= what ideas.. 10 = world class, others look to us) ________
2. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your organisation’s ability to put ideas into action and into “the way we do things here” (1=implement – what does that mean? 10=always implement quickly)? ________

Now multiply these two figures together = ________

If you score:

• 80-100 – WOW! keep up the great work
• 60-80 – Well done, you are getting there
• 40-60 – On the way, some more concerted effort is required
• 0-40 – You probable don’t react to change too quickly, this can be a strength, but watch out for your competition

To find out the actual level of innovative capacity you have in your organisation have a look at http://rapidbi.com/creatrix/ where the drivers of innovation can be used to help change the innovative capacity of individuals, teams and organisations.

Innovation Index – Practical & Real?

Innovation Index – is it relevant to 99% of businesses?

Innovation, we all are being asked to deliver it, but can we agree on what it is? Does it even matter?

Politically, many countries and global firms are involved in some form of Global Innovation Index, but does this really tell us what is happening, or who the innovative organisations really are?

Produced as a joint venture by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and The Manufacturing Institute (MI) the Global Innovation Index is a global measuring recording the level of innovation of a country. This Innovation Index takes the following data:

Innovation Inputs:

• included government and fiscal policy, education policy and the innovation environment.

Innovation Outputs:

• included patents, technology transfer, and other R&D results; business performance, such as labour productivity and total shareholder returns; and the impact of innovation on business migration and economic growth.

With the worlds top 10 countries being:

Rank Country Overall Innovation Inputs Innovation Performance

1 Singapore
2 South Korea
3 Switzerland
4 Iceland
5 Ireland
6 Hong Kong
7 Finland
8 United States
9 Japan
10 Sweden

This list is in itself interesting, as Iceland is all but bankrupt and Ireland not far behind it in significant financial troubles. Is this list meaningful in any way? China & India are the fastest growing economies, with both developing their own innovative solutions to social situations, but neither are listed highly?

Top Innovation Firms:

The Top 50 Innovative Companies in the World – Apple is number one for the fourth year in a row

Position – company – known for (innovation in)

1 APPLE -Products
2 GOOGLE – Customer Experience
3 TOYOTA MOTOR – Processes
4 GENERAL ELECTRIC – Processes
5 MICROSOFT – Products
6 TATA GROUP – Products
7 NINTENDO – Products
8 PROCTER & GAMBLE – Processes
9 SONY – Products
10 NOKIA – Products
11 AMAZON.COM – Customer Experience
12 IBM – Processes
13 RESEARCH IN MOTION – Products
14 BMW – Customer Experience
15 HEWLETT-PACKARD – Processes, Business Models, and Customer Experience
16 HONDA MOTOR – Products
17 WALT DISNEY – Customer Experience
18 GENERAL MOTORS – Products
19 RELIANCE INDUSTRIES – Business Models
20 BOEING – Products

What is interesting about this list and the whole of the top 50as listed by Business Week/Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is that these are all large international firms. But is this really where the innovation is? In the top 50 include RIM, EBay, Facebook, Amazon, but would these firms have been listed in their first couple of years of operation? No – because the nature of these measure requires them to have a significant impact on the market. But if you look at the innovation of these firms, the big innovations were the ones that got them to market in the first place. So looking at any measure like this can only be done historically, after years of innovation and success. What about the myriad of small firms bought by 3i, Google & Microsoft etc to add to their offers? Would they have been identified an innovative by any of the “conventional” measures?

Are these national & international innovation indexes meaningful to most people in business?

What ordinary organisations need is an Innovation Index that means something at a day to day operational level, something that shows progress and change towards the needs and business aspirations of that organisation.

The Creatrix from the Richard Byrd Company in MN is a great tool which recognised the changing skills and culture required to improve innovation in a given organisation. For example the type of culture and innovative approaches need to be different for a start-up as to a process improvement project or phase.

For example:

High Innovation Index

Lower Innovation Index

Having a high or low innovation index can be equally bad – the real answer lies in what phase of development/ growth your organisation is at and what your strategic and business plan requires you to deliver? It is vital to align the need with the innovative capacity of an organisations people, as needed at the time.

Any firm looking to be innovative needs to look at its culture, management style and systems. Relying on innovation teams for product or service development is no longer enough. Innovation can originate anywhere in an organisation, and if as an organisation we want to remain competitive we need to ensure that we have innovation at all levels of our organisation, and that all of our people are involved in innovation throughout our operations.

Organisations that have used the Creatrix Innovation Inventory include:

3M, Advantec, Agriliance, AMA, AMEX, AMIDEAST, Andcor, Appleton, ARC Automotive, Atos Worldline, BancInsure, Capella, Capstone, Cargill, Carlson, CHW, Cincinnati TEC, College of St. Catherine, Corporate Psychologists, CPSI, Creativity Central, , Data Card, Dow Jones, Dupont, Fraser Group, General Mills, Goodyear, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, KDV, Laing O’Rourke, Lebanon-Ministry of Finance, Medtronic, Merck, Money Gram, Morgan, Nestle, NHS, Roche, Schroeder, Siemens, Siemens DE Power, Stella, Yum Group

Contact us to find out how to measure the Innovation Index of your organisation, and what to do when you have that index!

Creating an organisational wide innovation culture

Ever heard people say…

“What we need in this organisation is innovation”, “Creativity will give us the edge”.

Leaders often utter these words with little realisation of the difficulties of bringing about a fundamental shift in the behaviour necessary to create an innovation culture across the enterprise. “We can empower people to bring new ideas, we’ll run some workshops on creativity” if only it were that simple. But alas this Procrustean approach is unlikely to reap rich rewards.

You remember Procrustes of course, the famous innkeeper of greek mythology? According to legend he was single-minded in his approach to hospitality, he kept an inn on the road to Athens and what distinguished this inn from any other was that it had only one room containing only one bed. Procrustes believed that all travellers who stayed in his hostel should fit in the bed, and this is where he was single-minded, those who were too tall swiftly had their feet cut off whilst those too short were stretched to fit. An unfortunate side effect of this unwarranted attention to detail meant that by the time he had executed the necessary adjustments many of his guests were, well, dead!

A one size fits all approach denies the reality that people are different and in developing an approach towards encouraging innovation these differences need to be surfaced and reconciled.

One organisation has devised a more enlightened strategy. Recognising early on that building a culture of innovation requires some foresight and hard graft in building a critical mass of people who understand their own, and others innovation style they targeted successive intakes of graduates to build new ways of thinking and acting to realise their innovation potential.

Around 40 graduates a year participate in the graduate development programme, after successfully completing an assessment centre. Critical reasoning tests are part of the selection process but interestingly, so too is a creative thinking test that explores, fluency – the number of ideas generated, originality – how original are the ideas and lateral flexibility – how diverse these ideas are. Candidates are chosen according to their strengths either in critical reasoning or creativity – some even have strengths in both domains! Importantly, whatever their strengths each have a vital role in the innovation process.

At the very first module of their development programme they are introduced to two important topics – learning and innovation. Each individual learns about their own preferences for learning which involves a combination of thinking and action (after Kolb) and understand the strengths and limitations of each preference. Prior to the module they are asked to complete a Creatrix™ inventory and when attending are introduced to the underlying concepts that describe innovation capacity – creativity and risk taking. The blend of these constructs gives unique profiles that describe typical approaches and attitudes towards the behaviours associated with innovation. Through an understanding of their own approach and strengths towards innovation the groups develop awareness of the need to balance innovation teams, too many innovators and a surfeit of ideas but no action, too many sustainers and no ideas will see the light of day. Appreciating their own and others styles helps in several ways; they recognise their own unique contribution to the innovation process; they identify potential barriers and possible levers that can help navigate from ideas to action; they develop a language for describing and understanding innovation; they identify ways of making things happen by circumventing the organisational “permafrost” that kill possibilities prematurely; they develop individual action plans for switching on their own capacity for innovation; and build a network across the organisation to act on those thorny cross functional problems.

This fresh approach of seeding the organisation with new entrants untainted by the inevitable cynicism seasoned campaigners in the organisation is beginning to bear fruit. Hungry to make a mark many of the graduates are pushing new ideas and making a succession of small wins from streamlining processes to developing new products – and what’s more getting the support of the person at the top. As this population grows with each successive stream a critical mass of young innovators is being formed who want to push the boundaries even further.

For this group in the organisation, change and innovation is not a threat, they feel empowered to drive it and, for them, it is the opportunity for more learning.

With innovation, as in other aspects of life, diversity brings real advantages, a concept that was lost on poor Procrustes.

By Mike Morrison & Vince Whittle

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For more information on creating an innovative culture see: www.rapidbi.com/creatrix & www.rapidbi.com/bir

For more management articles see www.rapidbi.com/articles

© This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and links maintained

© RapidBI.com 2008

http://www.rapidbi.com

This material may be put on your Blog or website – however please keep this copyright statement

Deep-Dive brainstorming technique – IDEO

What is the Deep-Dive™ Brainstorming technique?

Deep-Dive™ is the name of a technique used to rapidly immerse a group or team into a situation for problem solving or idea creation. This approach is often used for brainstorming product or process development.

History
Originally developed by the IDEO group (a learning design company) for rapid product development, the Deep-Dive technique is now widely and increasingly used for innovation not only in product development, but process improvement and customer service strategies. The method used by IDEO was documented by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer (of International Institute of Management Development (IMD) business school), who latterly further enhanced the process and sold the rights to Deloitte Consulting in 2006.

This approach to innovation often focuses on four distinct areas: Process, Organisation, Culture, and Leadership.

The key to a successful Deep-Dive session(s) is for participants to arrive with information about the needs of their customers – and most importantly an open mind of what they can offer and how they can meet clients needs and expectations.

Often Deep-Dive sessions are run off-site, this has the disadvantage of helping to ‘educate’ the participants that they can only think ‘off-site’. To help support and engender a spirit of creative thinking it is recommended that all Deep-Dive sessions occur on-site.
Deep Dive as a team development process

In the current economic climate it is simply not good enough for an individual team to achieve results. The application of the Deep-Dive methodology, can enable an organisation to improve the performance of teams across the organisation.

Not all teams are equal, and not all are effective. This can often result in lost opportunities and negative bottom-line impact for the organisation.

In the situation when an organisation is undergoing significant ‘change’, frustration with team performance has encouraged many organisations to employ “quick fix” solutions. This will often mean engaging additional resources from outside the organisation (new staff, consultants, interim etc) to facilitate training and development activities as well as to make improvements in technology and available facilities. Despite these well intentioned solutions and the potential for substantial payback, truly high-performing teams are rare (Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith).

These quick fix solutions focus on Maslows hygiene factors rather than on what it takes to engender a high performing team. Providing the team the latest technology, an agenda, a facilitator, a timekeeper, a leader, and a sense of mutual respect does not necessarily mean that they will achieve the desired results. A clear goal, resources, expectations of success and developing that sense of synergy working towards Maslows “Self Actualisation” for the team and all of its members. This is what the Deep-Dive process is designed to do – when run and integrated to the organisation as a whole.

Deep Dive – A five step process

• Understand the market/ client/ technology and constraints (internal & External SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and PRIMO-F analysis)
• Observe real people in real situations
• Visualise new-to-the-world concepts and ultimate customers
• Evaluate and refine prototypes
• Implement new concept for commercialisation

A typical Deep Dive process

• Creation of Hot Teams to work on the opportunities/ problems (these teams work the process end to end)
• Brainstorming – of ideas and options in context of customer needs
• Rapid Prototyping of potential solutions
• Observing & Listening from Customers (internal and external)
• Thinking of products in terms of verbs, rather than nouns

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Hot Teams in a Deep Dive process

• Create teams to run the process through from beginning to end
• Named Hot Teams – having a name builds identity
• Multidisciplinary – this is about collaboration and participation
• Group leader is assigned based on their abilities to work with groups. – leadership is the corner stone of success in this context

 Effective brainstorming technique

• Clarify the focus for the event
• Playful rules – this is about enabling – not disabling
  • One conversation at a time
  • Stay focused on the task
  • Encourage wild ideas
  • Go for quantity
  • Be visual
  • Defer judgement
  • Build on the ideas of others
• Number your ideas – allows indexing later
• Build and jump – use flip-chart carousels – staying in one place too long limits ideas
• The space remembers – what has happened in it, going back from when it was constructed
• Stretch your mental muscles – challenge – get outside the box
• Get physical – keep moving, use AVK resources

Six ways to stop a brainstorm session

Producing new and good ideas, even in an ideal environment, is hard work. Here is a critical list of techniques to avoid to stopping the process in its tracks:

• Let the boss lead/ speak first
• Give everyone a turn and time equality
• Ask the experts only – they know best
• Go off-site – if you need a creative environment…
• No silly stuff- keep it business like and ‘straight’
• Write down everything – something important might get missed

Rapid Prototyping

Once the idea generation and capture phase is completed a number of ideas should be ‘prototypes’ to see how they may or may not work. An idea should not be progressed to implementation until it is been prototyped and tested along with a number of other ideas. This is a common mistake in many brainstorming processes.
Rapid prototyping involves putting brainstormed ideas together and building or trying out ideas, concepts or processes.
Trying or testing involved participants walking through or role playing customers, suppliers and other parties to test or explore the merits of the proposal.
At the centre of this approach, prototyping is an act of visual and interactive brainstorming. By making something, be it an object or a physical experience, you can ‘see’ and experience it in a new way. This approach suddenly makes ideas more tangibly, making your goal closer at the same time it highlights issues that weren’t obvious when it was merely just a good idea on a board or flip-chart.
Once you have decided on an idea to develop, it is time to start prototyping! This means making a quick model, a 3D sketch, to illustrate your idea.

Rules for Rapid Prototyping in innovation:

• Get solid quickly – many people can understand concepts better when presented with a solid model
• Start Simple – it does not have to be production quality
• Work Rapidly- this is about concept – not accuracy
• Make it rough – the ‘neater’ it looks the more opportunity to criticise the ‘look’

Allow 30-45 minutes to make your prototype model

Observing & Listening from Customers (internal and external)
Customers count – if they do not want your idea, product or service, why invest time effort and money in developing it?

So many products are invested in and developed when if is obvious (to those observing) there is no real need – just watch the typical ‘Dragons den’ programme.

Customers need to be involved right from the start – your real ‘experts’ are you customers…. not your ‘specialists’.

Think of products in terms of verbs rather than nouns
We talk of phones, TV’s, computers, Blackberry etc.

What we need to do in order to be more innovative is think about these objectives as.. Mobile Phoning, watching interactions, computing, mobile emailing etc.

To focus on the verb rather than the noun enables us to look at the process and outcome as one, rather than objects and tasks.

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Process – Organisation – Culture – Leadership

Process

• Fail often in order to succeed sooner. Enlightened trial and error usually succeeds over the lone genius. Prototyping facilitates learning about the product, service or process.
• Prototype multiple ideas on a small scale to demonstrate, build on something you can see, feel and experience.
• Market research – engage end users – deadly if your customers are taken for granted; also immerse yourself in the associated product environment.

Organisation – Flat structure focused on learning. No type-casting allowed.

Culture – Trust in team members is vital and central to this methodology. Don’t always listen to the ‘boss’. Do the contrary!

Leadership – The team leader only facilitates, they are not the expert. Their role is solely to coach the process, but not involved in ideas. This allows freedom. This process is consistent.

Being innovative in a corporate environment

Robert Sutton in his book ‘Weird Ideas that Work’ states the following as approaches to explore in the development and journey towards being an innovative organisation:

• Hire ‘Slow Learners’ (of the organisational code)
• Hire People Who Make You Uncomfortable, Even Those You Dislike
• Hire People You (Probably) Don’t Need
• Use Job Interviews to Get Ideas, Not to Screen Candidates
• Encourage People to Ignore and Defy Superiors and Peers
• Find Some Happy People and Get them to Fight
• Reward Success and Failure, Punish Inaction
• Decide to Do Something That Will Probably Fail, Then Convince Yourself and Everybody Else That Success is Certain
• Think of Some Ridiculous or Impractical Things to Do, Then Plan to Do Them.
• Avoid, Distract, and Bore Customers, Critics, and Anyone Who Just Wants to Talk About Money
• Don’t Try to Learn Anything from People Who Seem to Have Solved the Problems You Face.
• Forget the Past, Especially Your Company’s Successes
  

Resources for innovation
The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm. Kelley, Tom. Doubleday, 2001

The Innovation Equation: Building Creativity and Risk Taking in your Organisation, Byrd, 2003, Wiley

Weird Ideas that Work: 11½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation. Sutton, Robert I. 2002. New York: Free Press

Creatrix and the Innovation Equation

Notes
The ‘Deep-Dive’ methodology is ™ and © Deloitte Consulting since they purchased the IP and © from IDEO.

 

33 Ways to develop an Innovative Culture in your org.

Ways to develop a Culture of Innovation

Many organisations strive for a competitive edge, an advantage over their competitors to help ensure their sustainability. Innovation is one such way, but for too long many organisations have concentrated on developing product and ignored the possibilities of innovation as a culture. Having an innovative friendly culture can harness the innovative and creative capacities of the entire workforce (and your customers and suppliers) to your advantage. But it is a difficult and for some a scary step.

Below are some of the activities that you may need to undertake on your journey to increasing the innovative capacity of your organisation

 

1. Great sources of new ideas are new starters to the company. Use them wisely and creatively
2. Always question longstanding beliefs
3. Ask questions about everything. After asking questions, ask different questions. After asking different questions, ask them in a different way
4. Avoid analysis paralysis
5. Change – change teams, project members and responsibilities
6. Communicate – open communication about anything and everything – make it easy to do
7. Communicate, communicate, communicate and communicate again. Ensure that every important message is repeated more than five times
8. Concentrate on the process of being effective at taking an idea from initial thought to application or market.
9. Embrace and celebrate failure. Success comes from volume not just quality
10. Encourage interaction between parts of the organisation that traditionally don’t communicate or usually collaborate together
11. Encourage people to meet informally, one-on-one, and in small groups, not just in functional teams
12. Ensure that everyone knows that reducing costs as a core strategy solves nothing. High costs are usually a sign of deeper or systematic problems
13. Have fun. If you’re not having fun (or at least enjoying the process) something is off
14. Imagine what you can make happen rather than dwelling on what might
15. Involve your customers as partners in the innovation process, while understanding that they are usually limited to wanting incremental innovations
16. Learn to see things differently
17. Learn to tolerate and enjoy ambiguity in data, and methods
18. Make decisions quickly at the lowest level possible
19. Make innovation the responsibility of all employees with appropriate objectives for each and every functional area
20. Make many new mistakes
21. Making innovation process rigid and core will stop spontaneous innovation efforts
22. No fixed rules or formula’s, only guiding principles
23. Notice change and innovation attempts and reward them
24. Provide time for your people to explore ideas and concepts through trust
25. Remove all organisational barriers which are stopping people communicating BHAG – Bold, Hairy Audacious Goals to senior management/ decision makers
26. Remove fear from the culture and management style
27. Reward collective, as well as individual successes, maintaining individual accountabilities, keeping innovation “heroes” visible
28. Seek a wide range of viewpoints. A diversity of views sparks more than conflict, it sparks innovation
29. Seek ways to learn from experience and find new and effective methods of sharing learning with your people
30. Use stories to support the transfer of learning
31. Spark interest – add images, photos and colour to your environment
32. Take a “go-slow now to go-fast later” approach, get many people involved at the beginning
33. Think of “self-organising” innovation, rather than “command and control” innovation
34. Think in the long term. Short term-ism has been proven not to work!

Using powerful organisational tools like the Creatrix can help to identify where the strengths of innovation lie in your organisation and provide a benchmarking took for measuring progress as you move towards being increasingly innovative – for innovation is a journey not a destination.

Byrd & Brown in their book provide a useful tool “the innovation Equation” where:

Innovation=creativity * risk-taking

In providing this equation the authors provide us – the change agents with a powerful methodology

**Article based upon an origional piece  by Mitch Ditkoff and Val Vadeboncoeurby

Bullying at work, recognising it & its impact on innovation

Bullying at work on the increase

Or so the reports and surveys tell us. What we do know is that where bullying exists, trust does not. We also know that innovation requires openness and trust. So what do we really have in our organisations – innovation OR bullying?

Are you being bullied at work – or are you a work place bully?

As employers we have a responsibility to our employees, customers and suppliers for them to be respected and not bullied in any way. To deliver on that responsibility we need to first recognise when bullying is taking place.

It is said that half the population are bullied (not all at work)… most only realise it when they read articles like this.

How to spot a workplace bully:

Bad (ineffective) Manager/ Team Leader	Good(effective) Manager/ Team Leader
Bully / Coward	Leader
Random/ impulsive	Decisive
Rigid/ short term	Identifies short & long term goals
Abdicates responsibility	Accepts responsibility
Takes all the credit	Shares credit
Denies failings	Acknowledges failings
Inability to learn or change ways	Learns from experience
Inconsistent	Consistent
Critical, singles people out	Fair, treats people equally
Disrespectful and inconsiderate	Respectful & considerate

Bullying is often characterised as offencive, intimidating or insulting behaviour, an abuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate or denigrate the recipient.

Harassment is unwanted behaviour affecting the dignity of an individual in the workplace. It may be related to sex, age, religion, race, disability or personal preferences of the individual. It may be persistent or a one off incident.

What is bullying?

What is bullying?  Constant nit-picking, fault-finding or criticism of a trivial nature – the triviality, regularity and frequency betray bullying; often there is a grain of truth in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication Simultaneous with the criticism, a constant refusal to acknowledge you and your contributions and achievements or to recognise your existence and value Constant attempts to undermine you and your position, status, worth, value and potential Where you are in a group (eg at work), being singled out and treated differently; for instance, everyone else can get away with murder but the moment you put a foot wrong – however trivial – action is taken against you Being isolated and separated from colleagues, excluded from what’s going on, marginalised, overruled, ignored, sidelined, frozen out, sent to “Coventry” Being belittled, demeaned and patronised, especially in front of others Being humiliated, shouted at and threatened, often in front of others Being overloaded with work, or having all your work taken away and replaced with either menial tasks (filing, photocopying, minute taking) or with no work at all Finding that your work – and the credit for it – is stolen and plagiarised Having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away Having annual leave, sickness leave, and – especially – compassionate leave refused Being denied training necessary for you to fulfil your duties Having unrealistic goals set, which change as you approach them Ditto deadlines which are changed at short notice – or no notice – and without you being informed until it’s too late Finding that everything you say and do is twisted, distorted and misrepresented Being subjected to disciplinary procedures with verbal or written warnings imposed for trivial or fabricated reasons and without proper investigation Being coerced into leaving through no fault of your own, constructive dismissal, early or ill-health retirement, etc

 

How to recognise a bully:

How do I recognise a bully?Most bullying is traceable to one person, male or female – bullying is not a gender issue. Bullies are often clever people (especially female bullies) but you can be clever too. Who does this describe in your life?  Jekyll & Hyde nature – vicious and vindictive in private, but innocent and charming in front of witnesses; no-one can (or wants to) believe this individual has a vindictive nature – only the current target sees both sides Is a convincing, compulsive liar and when called to account, will make up anything spontaneously to fit their needs at that moment Uses lots of charm and is always plausible and convincing when peers, superiors or others are present; the motive of the charm is deception and its purpose is to compensate for lack of empathy Relies on mimicry to convince others that they are a “normal” human being but their words, writing and deeds are hollow, superficial and glib Displays a great deal of certitude and self-assuredness to mask their insecurity Excels at deception Exhibits unusual inappropriate attitudes to sexual matters or sexual behaviour; underneath the charming exterior there are often suspicions or intimations of sexual harassment, sex discrimination or sexual abuse (sometimes racial prejudice as well) Exhibits much controlling behaviour and is a control freak displays a compulsive need to criticise whilst simultaneously refusing to acknowledge, value and praise others When called upon to share or address the needs and concerns of others, responds with impatience, irritability and aggression Often has an overwhelming, unhealthy and narcissistic need to portray themselves as a wonderful, kind, caring and compassionate person, in contrast to their behaviour and treatment of others; the bully is oblivious to the discrepancy between how they like to be seen (and believe they are seen), and how they are actually seen Has an overbearing belief in their qualities of leadership but cannot distinguish between leadership (maturity, decisiveness, assertiveness, trust and integrity) and bullying (immaturity, impulsiveness, aggression, distrust and deceitfulness) When called to account, immediately and aggressively denies everything, then counter-attacks with distorted or fabricated criticisms and allegations; if this is insufficient, quickly feigns victim-hood, often by bursting into tears (the purpose is to avoid answering the question and thus evade accountability by manipulating others through the use of guilt) Is also … aggressive, devious, manipulative, spiteful, vengeful, doesn’t listen, can’t sustain mature adult conversation, lacks a conscience, shows no remorse, is drawn to power, emotionally cold and flat, humourless, joyless, ungrateful, dysfunctional, disruptive, divisive, rigid and inflexible, selfish, insincere, insecure, immature and deeply inadequate, especially in interpersonal skills

Taking action at work to stop bullying:

Creating an anti-bullying ethos

Developing an anti-bullying policy is part of a wider commitment to ensuring a safe and productive work environment and a healthy workplace. Creating an anti-bullying ethos is a comprehensive and challenging objective which needs to be carefully thought through and understood before you start. This like any other organisational development strategy will require stakeholder buy-in and time to develop and implement. Like all change their will be some that welcome it and others that will not (use some of the tools in our change management sections). Often it will be the perpetrators that create the biggest resistance to this change. Be consistent, and seek help from professionals that are experienced in this area.

Bottom Line

All staff will perform better and more effectively in an environment in which trust exists. If we want innovation, we cannot have any form of bullying or harassment – as an organisation we have a choice – innovate and survive or don’t and die eventually – we cannot have widespread innovation where bullying exists.

Many of our organisations are striving to develop the innovative capacity of our people, however to have a culture of innovation requires openness and trust – bullying is symptom of a culture which cannot sustain openness and trust.

 

For more information please visit http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/index.htm and support the organisation by purchasing their resources

Innovation, the first step – dare, change, take a risk

Innovation is about the first step

Innovation is the buzzword of the late naughties, but what does it mean?

“Innovation is the act of introducing something new“

 

Often we focus on the act of creating, indeed many training and development programmes look to developing creativity in order to create innovative cultures. Is this right?

Innovation can mean two very different things, I suspect that often we confuse the two. many organizations take innovation to be something to do with product and R&D or technology. This is indeed a very specialist area, however it is not for the technology people to hijack a valuable culture and change methodology and approach. In the service sector, in public sector and the NHS we need to look at the culture (how we do things) and the behaviours to deliver added value. This piece looks at innovation as a strategy everyone in an organisation can use to increase productivity, morale and the business as a whole.

You only need to look around. Look at  - peoples houses, their gardens, their cars, their sense of fashion – creativity is everywhere. Unfortunately the culture of many work places encourages people to leave their creative brains at the door when they come to work every day. We need to focus not of the act of creation, but the ability to allow people to be creative. To do something with the ideas.  This is about culture.

In western society we seem to treat risk as bad. Indeed even the dictionary defines it as:

The possibility of suffering harm or loss; danger

A factor, thing, element, or course involving uncertain danger; a hazard

source: answers.com

Without a ‘risk of loss’ there is no opportunity of gain. Lets look at how we may feel if we change the definition:

The possibility of winning or being successful

A factor, thing, element, or course involving uncertain success or achievement

source: rapidbi.com

The ability to “take a risk” is essential if we want to change the status quo. We need to embrace change. Indeed I would go as far as to say:

Innovation is achieved through creativity AND change preparedness

 

What are the barriers for you taking a chance, daring do take the first step. I love this video – what does it mean for you in the context of innovation and change?

In the Innovation Equation by Byrd & Brown Innovation is defined as:

Innovation = Risk Taking * Innovation

If Risk taking (act of doing something) is the same as change preparedness – then this is indeed a valuable approach to changing the culture in our organizations.

What will you dare to do today?

The rising cost of learning… The E-Book – con or hero?

The rising cost of learning…

First there was decimalisation, then the Euro, the litre and now the e-book. Isn’t it interesting that to many of us the actual increasing costs of things are not so obvious when there has been a change of culture or context?

With the introduction of decimalisation in the early 70s and latterly the Euro across central Europe many products were rounded up in price. Even more recently the move from selling petrol from gallons to litres allowed the price to jump without many people causing a fuss. I recall when I first passed my test often driving to another garage for ½p price difference on a gallon – but now the price varies by often up to 10p per litre in the same area. People have just accepted it.

What prompted this thought and is it relevant to learning and Development?

Today I was told that I was ‘lucky’ and had won a prize in a competition. Great I thought, I was provided with a web link and £75 worth of vouchers to spend on downloads of training activities, exercises or icebreakers… hey £75 worth of resources free – not to be sneezed at. Until I realise what they cost – 2*£5 credits per item – itself not outrageous until you look at the printed pack this one activity is derived – 100 items for £249 – or £2.49 each – printed and an electronic copy on disc… now what is the better value… 20 separate purchases or 100 activities? All for the same price.  Now I know that we are in a world where we all want it today…now – but is it really that sensible?  In the social period that is the credit crunch will people be changing their on-line and resource purchasing habits?

Having looked at this one example I looked at a couple of competitor sites – basically they all do the same thing , but, reading between the lines and looking at the statistics that some of these site show the number of downloads of a single item is not that great. Often in single or low double figures. If you only want one item then £10 is good value – but if you think over time you will need more is it worth paying the price of instant gratification?

The wonderful e-book

This leads neatly on to a conversation I had with a fellow trainer this morning, we were talking about website and selling product and the discussion got round to e-books. Now a good book, with nice pages and well bound costs £6-29 – most around the ‘tenner’ mark. So why o why do people pay £29, £39 or £49+ for an e-book? Often these publications have poor layout, spelling mistakes and generally not very good in terms of content. What is more we pay to print them on our own printer. Our discussion concluded that people buy e-books because they have learnt to trust the author; after all the web site was written by the author and this builds trust. The language on the ‘sales’ page is strong to suggest what you are hetting is great value.

Personally I wonder if it is more simple that that; we believe an e-book is more like software than a book and we know how much software costs (indeed many used to come with huge free books – manuals!).

Books (publications) like the One Minute Manager cost £6.99 or £3.49 on Amazon…. These books have 107 pages of content – few e-books have this many and often cost almost 10 times more.

Is this us as purchasers really buying a quality product – or have we been conned into the currency of the ‘download’ on the web?

Now I am not saying that people should give all their work away for free – far from it – but as purchasers we need to understand that when comparing one technology with another it is OK to do that and to help the market find the ‘right’ price for the product on offer.

Creating and maintaining a high performance culture

A High Performance Culture is something many organizations strive to achieve. Many have achieved it in their own unique and distinctive ways. However, certain fundamental common factors need to exist without which a “High Performance Culture” will not be created.

In difficult economic time this can be difficult to justify – however now is the time to prepare the organization for the future. Organizational development strategies take time to formulate, develop and deploy – and that is before the returns start to generate. Wait for the “good times” and your competitors will beat you. Start now and the culture will be in place ready for the next shift in the economy. Whatever the case – being a high performance organization is just as important in difficult times as it is good time – many would argue it is more important.

The five principles or ‘flows’ are:

PLOWS

Purpose- A shared purpose is the necessary focus for the performance of any task or activity in a high performing culture.

Learning – individual, collective and organisational. Such organisations understand change and its impact and quickly work out what needs to be done and what capabilities they need to survive and succeed.

Opportunity – recognising, seeking, creating and taking opportunities to change and improve capability, effectiveness, efficiency and performance.

Worth- understanding the value and worth of the work being done, the people who are doing it and the outcomes being delivered – and communicating it widely to all interested parties.

Support- from management and colleagues in the shape of resources, information, encouragement etc. so everyone feels able to the best job they possibly can.

 

Some practitioners add:

Engagement, Energy or Empowerment and Relationships

Engagement- the enthusiasm, drive and oomph that individuals deliver which is above and beyond – discretionary effort

Relationships- there is nothing more powerful than a team who respect, trust, recognise each others strengths, complement those, challenge and stretch each other.

Changing Purpose to Focus provides us with a more memorable mnemonic(s):

This creates the FLOWERS model to high performance cultures or as I prefer to call it the High performance Culture REFLOWS© model:

• Relationships
• Engagement
• Focus
• Learning
• Opportunity
• Worth
• Support

Note – check out Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi work on FLOW

Excellence in Organizational Development and Diagnostics

Delivering an excellent solution be it for business improvement or organizational development is not just about having an excellent intervention. It is about having an intervention or change plan which is:

• Linked to the business goal and plan
• Linked to the current and desired culture of the organization

Often interventions and improvement projects fail due to:

• Activities not linked to organizational objectives
• No overall strategy for corporate development
• Time pressures on managers
• Process not managed
• Managers lack appropriate skills
• Staff resent the process (been there and it did not work last time)
• Focus on the individual not the business/ organization as a whole
• Too backward looking

Prior to any intervention we need to undertake an effective and holistic review to identify appropriate needs and priorities.

The Rapid Business Improvement process uses an organizational needs analysis tool (BIR), designed to quickly capture the current performance of the organization and help you identify high impact business improvements.

• Capture a snapshot of the business
• Contrast the perception of stakeholders
• Identify priorities
• Determine improvement action

The outcomes of any effective diagnosis process should provide:

• An agenda to discuss (not just off the shelf solutions with little or no ownership)
• Data based upon the perceptions of the various stakeholders involved (inc: Board, management team, staff, customers and suppliers)
• Differences in perceptions across groups & between managers
• A comparison of current versus desired state
• A modular approach to meet the customers immediate and medium term objectives
• Outputs which have face validity with all users
• Based on a change management philospopy for increased engagement

Innovation – Creating an organizational wide culture of executive innovation

Executive innovation – creating the culture

Ever heard your people say…

“What we need in this organization is innovation” or “Creativity will give us the edge”.

Executives and leaders often utter these words with little realisation of the difficulties of bringing about a fundamental shift in the behaviour necessary to create an innovation culture across the organization. “We can empower people to bring new ideas, we’ll run some workshops on creativity” if only it were that simple. But alas this Procrustean approach is unlikely to reap rich rewards.

You remember Procrustes of course, the famous innkeeper of Greek mythology? According to legend he was single-minded in his approach to hospitality, he kept an inn on the road to Athens and what distinguished this inn from any other was that it had only one room containing only one bed. Procrustes believed that all travellers who stayed in his hostel should fit in the bed, and this is where he was single-minded, those who were too tall swiftly had their feet cut off whilst those too short were stretched to fit. An unfortunate side effect of this unwarranted attention to detail meant that by the time he had executed the necessary adjustments many of his guests were, well, dead!

A one size fits all approach denies the reality that people are different and in developing an approach towards encouraging innovation these differences need to be surfaced and reconciled.

One organization has devised a more enlightened strategy. Recognising early on that building a culture of innovation requires some foresight and hard graft in building a critical mass of people who understand their own, and others innovation style they targeted successive intakes of graduates to build new ways of thinking and acting to realise their innovation potential.

Around 40 graduates a year participate in the graduate development programme, after successfully completing an assessment centre. Critical reasoning tests are part of the selection process but interestingly, so too is a creative thinking test that explores, fluency – the number of ideas generated, originality – how original are the ideas and lateral flexibility – how diverse these ideas are. Candidates are chosen according to their strengths either in critical reasoning or creativity – some even have strengths in both domains! Importantly, whatever their strengths each have a vital role in the innovation process.

At the very first module of their development programme they are introduced to two important topics – learning and innovation. Each individual learns about their own preferences for learning which involves a combination of thinking and action (after Kolb) and understand the strengths and limitations of each preference. Prior to the module they are asked to complete a Creatrix™ inventory and when attending are introduced to the underlying concepts that describe innovation capacity – creativity and risk taking. The blend of these constructs gives unique profiles that describe typical approaches and attitudes towards the behaviours associated with innovation. Through an understanding of their own approach and strengths towards innovation the groups develop awareness of the need to balance innovation teams, too many innovators and a surfeit of ideas but no action, too many sustainers and no ideas will see the light of day. Appreciating their own and others styles helps in several ways; they recognise their own unique contribution to the innovation process; they identify potential barriers and possible levers that can help navigate from ideas to action; they develop a language for describing and understanding innovation; they identify ways of making things happen by circumventing the organisational “permafrost” that kill possibilities prematurely; they develop individual action plans for switching on their own capacity for innovation; and build a network across the organisation to act on those thorny cross functional problems.

This fresh approach of seeding the organization with new entrants untainted by the inevitable cynicism seasoned campaigners in the organisation is beginning to bear fruit. Hungry to make a mark many of the graduates are pushing new ideas and making a succession of small wins from streamlining processes to developing new products – and what’s more getting the support of the person at the top. As this population grows with each successive stream a critical mass of young innovators is being formed who want to push the boundaries even further.

For this group in the organisation, change and innovation is not a threat, they feel empowered to drive it and, for them, it is the opportunity for more learning.

With innovation, as in other aspects of life, diversity brings real advantages, a concept that was lost on poor Procrustes.

Increasingly the concept of executive innovation is on the corporate agenda, but is it just another fad? No not if used appropriately and owned at the top. When the executives in an organization “walk the talk” and work pro-actively to create a culture of innovation, rather than the typical attitude of creating an “innovation team”. Innovation needs to permeate throughout the fabric of the organization…top through to customer facing people. The behavioural approach of the Creatrix model is a powerful way of starting the journey of innovation in your company.

By Mike Morrison & Vince Whittle © 2004-2008

Executive Innovation the key to success?

Is Executive Innovation the key to success?
The world economy is changing… are we reacting fast enough?
For many executives innovation is just not happening fast enough according to recent articles and research from Boston Consulting Group’s annual study on innovation.

Many organisations know that first in order to survive and then to grow they need to innovate. In recent years the focus of innovation has been on creativity and the innovative process, but the lack of results show that this is only half the picture.

Background to executive innovation

In the 1960s and 70s Dr Richard Byrd developed some research which led to the publication of a model he originally called the C&RT or creativity and risk taking (1986). This model was adopted by the Pfeiffer publications company as a key part of a methodology they called Applied Strategic Planning. They realised that for successful strategy, risk and innovation as behaviour (rather than a process) was fundamental. In the 1990s Byrd’s daughter, Dr Jacqueline Byrd further refined and developed the C&RT and used the technology available on the web to make the Creatrix model more robust and provide the ability to delve deeper to ensure any development activity resulted in effective behaviour change.

Innovation everywhere but little progress

Many organisations have innovation departments, functions or teams and yet little progress is actually being made in terms of productivity, cost saving or market share. Certainly organisations are developing new and innovative products, but as technologies collide and merge and economies tighten, the consumer buys less. For example the markets or phones, music players, cameras and GPS systems are merging fast – where there used to be four markets increasingly there is one.

Innovation needs to be at all levels and in all elements within an organisation to be effective. In the 1990s benchmarking processes to identify the most effective way of working was everywhere, not organisations need to innovate internally to deliver best value in all that they do, not just product development. This is where entrepreneurial or executive innovation leads the way.

The fish rots from the head

Is the old saying, but innovation grows from the head. When introduces from the top as part of an organisations culture innovation can really make a difference. The key is the culture of the organisation, effective culture change starts from the CEO or COO.

Using tools like the Creatrix, executive or entrepreneurial innovation can be easily developed and nurtured, then when executives see the results they will soon want the whole organisation to behave this way too.

Innovation assessment

The Creatrix starts as a personal profile, with each individual involved in the change process undertaking a simple online inventory. The results of this single profile show the individual on the Creatrix grid, a combination of the individuals risk taking assessment and creativity assessment. In addition the individual gets an output showing the seven drivers and their respective strengths.

Collectively all the individuals involved in the team or organisation are plotted on one matrix or grid providing an overall innovation assessment.

This enables the executive team to review the current position of innovative behaviours and plan where is appropriate (there is no right or wrong profile – just more or less effective at that point in time). Then using the language of the Creatrix it is straightforward to develop a change based programme using the (now) common language to inspire and motivate appropriate change.

Dan Coughlin said

“Apply the same process you do at work by asking the following questions:

1. What does this individual or the members of this group want to achieve?

2. What is keeping them from achieving their objectives?

3. What can I provide or remove that would increase their chances of success?

4. How can I combine my answers to question three in a way that will add the most value to them?

5. Stop writing and move into action!

Mother Theresa was a classic example of this behaviour. She identified opportunities to add value and moved into action. We can do the same over and over again.“

Identifying opportunities and taking action are the two critical elements, simple, and yet many organisations still have barriers in place. Some of these barriers are obvious, many are invisible and should not exist… but they do

For innovation to be commonplace in our organisations we must stop looking at innovation as a process and start to look at it as a culture or set of behaviours.

Product innovation is one thing – executive innovation is quite another.

Not what… why

When situations are difficult it is easy to remain task focused (what), but does this help us maintain a future resistant approach?

Schein in “organizational Culture and leadership”  says “what happens in organizations is fairly easy to observe, but in the effort to understand why such things happen, culture as a concept comes into its own”

If leadership is the key to the future success of our organisation then culture is the lock. In a world where we are very short term-ist (just look at the financial markets) we think that we understand the ‘what’ i.e. what needs to be done, but this will again only have a short term impact. The UK gov has seen this first hand with the bailout of the finance sector. We need to “get under the surface” and understand why and change the behaviours.

This is the important of the longer term and longer vision.

In this article there is a challenge to the paralysis by analysis that can catch people who are unaware:

ASK WHAT, NOT WHY

Reckoning with your mind in order to free up your capacity for wisdom is the ongoing battle of life. For some, the battle is constant; others are not as affected. Regardless of which category you fall into, this chapter will give you the first tool for accessing the wisdom that can change your life. It’s a tool you use every day: the ordinary, common question.

One of the most common questions we ask is “Why?” “Why” is the language of seeking to understand. When we were young children, we used this question to figure out how the world works: “Why is the sky blue?,” “Why did Sparky run away?” As we get older, we still use “why” to bring our circumstances into alignment with our ability to understand our world.

Unfortunately, “why” eventually loses its power to move us forward; instead, we get “stuck” by obsessing over questions like “Why did that happen?,” “Why am I this way?,” and “Why aren’t I better-thinner-smarter?” 

 Without Why we would not progress, we would not innovate, we would not learn – copy by rote yes.. learn.. no. Anyone that has had children know very well those years where almost every question was “why” – why is a wonderful learning based question – it gets knocked out of most children by the age of 7 – a shame.

In Organisational Development the why is not just an important tools – it is the ONLY real tool. Without understanding why making any change is dangerous. In her book “the innovation equation” Byrd outlines eight orientations of innovative behaviour, one of those is the “modifier” who makes incremental changes without understanding the culture or context. this can be a dangerous activity if unchecked.

WE need to ensure that before we undertake any organisational development activity that we understand the “why”… the culture… or context in which the decision needs to be made.

many managers and leaders can be successful in one organisation but not in another  this is all down to the extent to which they can change the culture or context to match their strengths.

Over the years i have worked with many business owners and entrepreneurs that wanted to change the culture of their business, but did not realise that they were the culture – when the culture was changed (at their request) from the bottom up, often they were very uncomfortable and did not adjust – one of three things happen – they revert to the old culture or they leave or the company goes bust.

We all need to ask Why a Little more often and learn to understand the culture before proposing changes – at any level in organisations.