by Robyn Bolton | Mar 16, 2022 | Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
Imagine that you decided to temporarily shut down your business. You made this decision because you knew something major could go wrong and, despite some efforts, you didn’t make as much progress as you hoped. So, you temporarily closed without knowing how long “temporarily” would be.
Three months later, you have made big changes. Massive, ginormous, monumental changes. Changes to foundational elements of your business. You discontinued a beloved product, made existing products safer and expanded a controversial product.
Now, imagine that the press followed all of this. They reported on every meeting, speculated on every discussion, and critiqued every statement. They even said you should be fired.
But now, today, you announced that you’re open for business. All the problems are solved, and all the changes rolled out. The press celebrated, and articles, podcasts, and news stories heralded your business’ re-opening.
Your customers yawned.
They didn’t miss you.
Many didn’t even know you were gone.
A True Story
You just read the story of Major League Baseball at the end of its 99-day lockout.
But it could also be the story of your business if you make the same mistake MLB did in December, which is the same mistake it has made for the past 20+ years.
It forgot what business it’s in.
MLB thinks it’s in the baseball business. For some customers, diehard fans, it is. But for most, baseball is in the business of helping customers to:
- Make memories
- Have fun
- Feel connected to others
- Be entertained
- Drink beer and eat junk food without guilt
These are the Jobs to be Done that customers hire baseball to do for them. But there are dozens of other businesses offering to do the same Jobs, many in ways that are lower cost and more easily accessible. And fans are taking their business to those competitors.
According to Statista, the average per game attendance was 18,900 in 2021, a 34% decline from 2019. Even more troubling than this “generational low” is that people aren’t even watching baseball at home, evidenced by the 12% decline in TV viewership for games.
Customers are rejecting baseball. They just don’t care about it as much as they used to. As a result, they’re spending less time and less money on it and finding newer and better alternatives.
3 Questions to Figure Out if You’re Out (or In)
This story isn’t unique to MLB. It’s the story at the core of many failed businesses. The outward view of solving customers’ problems gives way to an increasingly inward-facing view of the business the business is in.
The story isn’t fast-paced or obvious, either. The declines happen slowly – average gameday attendance dropped only 367 people annually from 2012 to 2019, a decrease that’s easy to miss when considering that the average MLB ballpark holds 43,000 people.
But once the decline starts and apathy sets in, it is challenging to change the story. But not impossible.
If you want customers to care about you again, to need you and your products the way they used to, you need to care more about your customers than your business. You need to ask three questions:
1. “Why do you choose us?” (in Innovation-speak this translates to, “What are your Jobs to be Done?”)
2. “When you don’t choose us, who do you choose and why?”
Then you must listen. Really listen. To EVERYTHING customers say. The reasons you want to hear and the ones you don’t, The competitors you know and the ones you least expect. The things that make them better that you know and the ones you don’t agree with.
Then, and only then, do you look inward at your operations and business model and ask.
3. “What business are we in?”
Are your operations set up to deliver delight to customers or maximum efficiency to your business? Is your business model set up to create value for customers or maximize profit for you? Are you increasing the size of bases 3 inches and claiming its safer or doing everything possible to reduce the game’s length and increase its fun factor?
It’s not customer rejection that kills a business. It’s customer apathy.
Don’t allow your customers to become apathetic. They cared about your business once. Keep giving them reasons to care by asking what they care about and delivering it.
How do you make sure that you’re in the right business?
by Robyn Bolton | Mar 8, 2022 | Innovation, Leadership
When you were a child, you knew that the best stories began with “Once Upon a Time” and end with “And they lived happily ever after.” As an adult, you know that stories can begin and end any number of ways.
As a leader trying to grow a business, it may seem like all your innovation stories end with “And then we cancelled the project/disbanded the team/got distracted by the needs of our current business”
Why is that?
How can you change your innovation story the endings to “And they lived happily ever after (because they launched lots of cool new stuff that people loved and paid for and that led to new revenue and lots of growth and happy employees and other wonderful happy things)”
While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of answers to those questions, one of them is in the way you start the story.
How the story begins
Think about the last time you kicked off an innovation project. What did you say?
Story 1: “We need you to work on X and we don’t want you to be encumbered by what we’ve done in the past. We want you to explore, think creatively, and really push our thinking.
Story 2: “We need you to work on X and, to save you time, here is everything we did in the past. Use this as a starting point and build from here.
Story 3: We need you to work on X. Here’s what we did in the past, but we’re not tied to it. Look it over and let me know what you think we should do from here.
There’s nothing obviously wrong with any of these.
Just like “Once upon a time,” they start with clear direction – we need you to work on X. Even better, they all express your positive intentions and support (push our thinking, save you time, let me know what you think) for the team.
What could possibly go wrong?
How the story ends
The team returns from their quest, which usually involves a lot of research, to present their findings and recommendations. They are excited by what they discovered and eager to continue their work. They conclude their presentation and turn to you, eagerly awaiting your response.
If you started with #1
Thinking of all the freedom you gave at kickoff, and sigh. “That’s good work but we already knew most of that. We wanted you to push our thinking, but I don’t see a lot of new here.”
The team nods and tries to point out the new insights but to no avail. The gather their things and walk out. At best they feel dejected, like they failed an important test. At worst, they’re angry, feeling like the whole exercise was a trap. They know you’re disappointed and, as a result, the end is near.
If you started with #2
Thinking back to the dozens of files you gave them at kick-off, you lean forward and say, “That’s good work but we already knew most of that. To be fair, you built on what we had but why did it take so long?”
The team looks at each other, trying to hide their confusion. They built on what you gave them and delivered it on time. Not knowing quite what to say, they gather their things and walk out. Frustrated, they feel like they were set up to fail. After all, why would you give them so much time if you didn’t want them to use it? They know you’re frustrated too and brace themselves for the repercussions.
If you started with #3
You think back not to the kickoff but to the meeting after that, the one where the team presented their research plan. You take a deep breath and say, “That’s good work but we already knew most of that. To be fair, you did warn me that might be the case. I can see where some things shifted and where we gained new insights.”
The team nods and lays out the implications of their findings. They layout the milestones between today and a potential launch, and detail next steps to hit the next milestone. As before, you debate the insights and the plan, ultimately coming to agreement on what happens next. The team gathers their things and leaves the room, motivated to continue their work
What went wrong?
Three stories began but only 1 is on track for a “happily ever after.” The first two stories began with such promise, but they ended with dejection, anger, disappointment, confusion, and frustration. Why?
Unrealistic expectations
If you started with #1, you set unrealistic expectations. As a leader in the organization, you know more about the business than the team so it’s not realistic to expect the team to tell you something you don’t know. As someone with years of experience in the industry, you know that things don’t change overnight so even research that’s a few years old is still probably more right than wrong. Expecting the team to “push your thinking” and tell you something you don’t know isn’t realistic. Worse, it’s not fair.
Orders, not ownership
If you started with #2, you made it very clear from the start that you’re the expert by telling the team to take past work as a given and build on it rather than question it. You probably also gave them a timeline and told them to come back to you at the next milestone. You did all this to help the team work efficiently and you wanted them to feel ownership, to question the work and take the time they need, even if it’s less than the time given. But the team did exactly what you asked because you gave them orders and, in most companies, success comes from following orders.
What went right?
What did you do in #3 that put the team on path to “happily ever after?”
You were honest and transparent about past work. By sharing past work, you made it clear that you trusted the team to think critically and creatively, to analyze past data and make decisions about what should be kept, questioned, and discarded.
You invited the team to challenge you. When you shared the past work, you gave the team insight into your current hypotheses and biases. By admitting that you’re not tied to past work, you made it clear to the team that you were open to discussion and willing to change your mind.
You empowered the team to take ownership. By asking the team to review past work then come back to you with suggestions and plan, you gave them ownership of the process. When they left that first meeting, they were responsible for the work AND how the work got down. They were project owners now
The End (almost)
Good intentions aren’t enough to set innovation projects and teams up for success. How you start the story by setting expectations and empowering the team has a huge impact on how the story progresses and whether or not it ends “happily ever after.”
How do you start your stories?
by Robyn Bolton | Feb 13, 2022 | Innovation, Just for Fun, Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
Before setting off on a journey to strange lands, most travelers take time to learn an essential phrase or two in the native tongue. After all, the ability to say “Hello” or “Help” or “Where’s the bathroom?” in the local language can mean the difference between a trip you remember forever and one that you want to forget immediately.
The same is true for people in large companies who set off on a quest to innovate – you’re in a strange land, and having a few handy phrases at the tip of your tongue can mean the difference between success and failure.
Here are the four most important phrases you should know as a corporate innovator
What does success look like?
Ask this at the beginning of every innovation effort. If you don’t, it’s very likely that what you view as success and what decision-makers view as success will be two different things.
Staffing up a new innovation team? What does success look like?
Starting a new project? What does success look like?
Developing and testing a prototype? What does success look like?
And don’t accept a vague or even qualitative answer to the question, like “we’ll know it when we see it” or “better employee engagement.” You need to know precisely what an effort contributes to and how leaders will evaluate the effort. Otherwise, it’s easy for managers to “move the goalposts” right when you think you’re about to score.
We expect a new innovation team to hold five brainstorming sessions and test 3 new products this year
We need this project to generate $10M revenue in 3 years from today
We need to understand how consumers will use this if we don’t give them any directions
Will you help me?
This question is perhaps the most challenging but most potent phrase in the innovation-to-corporate dictionary.
By the very nature of your work – making something new that creates value – you’re doing something that doesn’t fit cleanly into the existing structure. While that can be liberating, it also means that there are few, if any, people obligated to give you advice, resources, or support. That’s where this phrase comes in.
We all love to feel important and valued, and nothing makes people feel more important or valued than being asked for help. Plus, when you ask for help, people feel like they’re contributing to what you’re doing and start to feel a bit of ownership (or at least fondness) for it. Soon, you not only have advisors, but you also have partners, advocates, and champions.
Tell me more
This phrase is the ultimate innovation jiu-jitsu phrase because it turns your opponents’ strength (of opinion) against them and gives you powerful insights.
That will never work. Intriguing, tell me more.
We tried it, and it failed; the same thing will happen this time. I didn’t know that, tell me more.
If you do that, you’ll be fired. We don’t want that, so tell me more about why that would result.
Sometimes the rationale behind powerfully delivered dogmatic statements is logical and valid. Often, it’s emotional. The person who said it would never work is afraid that, if it does, their job will be in jeopardy. The person who remembers when it was tried before still bears the scars of that attempt and wants to protect you from the same experience. The person who says you’ll be fired for doing something may think that the rules are stricter than they are, and they’re trying to help you.
This phrase helps you figure out the reason behind the statement, the Why behind the What, so you can figure out what is true versus believed and how to get to your desired outcome.
What do you need to see to say “Yes”?
This question is my personal favorite, taught to me by a good friend, career innovator, and successful entrepreneur.
It is easy to say “No” and, in fact, that is the purpose of many people in a large organization.
Legal says No to keep the company o the right side of the law and out of lawsuits.
Accounting says No to keep the company financially healthy
Your boss says no because you have more work than you can handle, and this doesn’t seem essential.
Sometimes “No” is the correct answer. But if you start there, you’ll never know if it is the right answer or just the first, easiest, or most instinctual answer.
So, once you hear “No,” engage the person you’re talking to in a quick intellectual exercise and ask what they need to see to say “Yes.” By engaging them as an expert and your thought partner, you’re lowering their defenses and bringing them into a problem-solving mindset. Plus, you’re getting valuable insight into the type of data and evidence required to make progress.
What are other phrases every innovator should know?
As anyone who has ever tried to quickly learn a language for an extended trip, you’re best served by seeking out multiple sources.
After all, if I relied solely on Rosetta Stone to learn Danish before I moved to Copenhagen, I would have arrived knowing only how to say “the girl is on top of the airplane” (phonetically, it’s “pia pa flu-va-ma-skine”) and not “Hello” or “Help” or “Where’s the bathroom?”
So what are the phrases you repeatedly use to navigate your corporate innovation journey?
by Robyn Bolton | Feb 6, 2022 | Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
You know that to deliver today’s business and achieve tomorrow’s goals, you need a portfolio of projects that improve your existing operations and a portfolio of innovation projects. You also know that to max out your odds of hitting tomorrow’s goals, you need a portfolio of different types of innovation projects.
You are also keenly aware that with limited resources, you can’t possibly fund every project.
So how do you make some of the most complex decisions that confront leaders?
Don’t fall into the trap of false choices.
It’s easy to feel like you need to decide between funding operations projects and innovation efforts. You don’t.
Projects that improve what you do today, like increasing efficiency and improving existing offerings, are fundamentally different than innovation projects that create something new. Trying to compare them is like trying to compare strawberries and broccoli – they’re fundamentally different, and people have strong feelings about both.
Do allocate resources to improvement AND innovation projects.
Most of your resources should go to improvement projects because there are what keep you in business and equal to (or ahead of) competitors. They’re also the lowest risk, so you can be confident of achieving your expected ROI.
Innovation projects are higher risk, and the number of resources they need is hard to predict, especially when they are in their earliest days or focused on something radically new and breakthrough.
Don’t give innovation projects all their resources at once.
Annual budgets make sense when you’re 99.9999% certain that the line item will be around for an entire year. But when you don’t know if a project will be around until next quarter, let alone next year, don’t give them all the resources upfront. Project teams will be tempted to front-load their spending and, if the project needs to end, it can be hard to quickly free up the resources to allocate them to a different project.
Do protect all innovation resources for an entire year.
Even if you have the excellent discipline to carve out an annual budget for innovation and dole it out in bite-sized chunks based on hitting key milestones, it can be hard to maintain that discipline. Over time, the funds allocated to innovation, but not specific projects, start to look like a piggy bank that you can “borrow” money from when your existing business needs to. And while your intentions may be good, borrowed money is never repaid and, as a result, isn’t available when it’s needed.
Don’t use the same criteria to evaluate every innovation project.
Every project needs a small initial investment – money and people to answer a question or explore a space to see if “there’s a there there.” But before allocating a single additional resource to an innovation project, you should be able to answer the following five questions:
- What is the problem we’re solving, and who has it?
- How can/will we solve this problem?
- Why should we solve this problem/create this solution (e.g., does this support our strategy and priorities or create a compelling and sustainable competitive advantage)?
- What results do we need/will we get?
- What is the next major milestone, and what is required to get there?
If these questions can’t be answered, more work needs to be done, or the effort must be canceled. But often, these questions can be answered, but additional resources aren’t allocated because they can’t be answered with the same depth, breadth, and certainty that later-stage innovation projects can.
Applying the same burden of proof to an early-stage project asking for $10,000 to conduct consumer research as you apply to a late-stage project asking for $10M to launch doesn’t protect you from making a mistake. It drains your innovation portfolio and “protects” you from growth.
Do evolve decision-making criteria as a project progresses and resource requests get bigger.
At every stage of its development, a project should be able to answer the five core questions above with increasing depth and greater confidence rooted in ever more concrete and quantifiable evidence.
For example, consider a project in the design phase (first draft of a solution) seeking a few thousand dollars to test a paper concept with customers. When asked, “What results do we need/will we get?” if the answer is “We believe we can generate $X revenue based on the following eight assumptions, all of which we find believable based on internal or external benchmarks.” If you agree, then give them the money.
When that same project reaches the De-Risk phase (in-market testing) and requests millions of dollars and dozens of people for launch, if the answer is the same, STOP everything immediately (and, honestly, it shouldn’t have gotten this far)! The answer in this phase should be a detailed P&L and NPV because you know more than you did back at Design, and you’re asking for more.
Resource allocation is complex, especially when you have limited resources and an abundance of very different but very attractive choices. But it can be easier with a bit of discipline and common sense.
What other tips and tricks do you use to make resources allocation decisions?
by Robyn Bolton | Jan 30, 2022 | Innovation, Leadership
After months of work, haggling, encouraging, and deep breathing, you finally have your innovation capability up and running.
Your innovation strategy clearly aligns with and supports the overall business strategy. Teams know the boundaries within which they can innovate, understand the results they need to deliver and access the people and tools they need to make progress. Your leadership team regularly engages with innovation teams, talks with customers, and shares progress and learnings with the whole organization.
Your work here is done.
Right?
Wrong.
It’s just beginning.
Building a lasting capability for sustainable and repeatable innovation is a marathon, not a sprint. And while what you achieved is genuinely momentous, it’s also the equivalent of signing up for a marathon, putting on your shoes, and walking out your front door.
In short, you’ve just started training.
Training for a marathon
Full disclosure, I have never run a marathon, and I never intend to. Many years ago, a group of friends decided to run a marathon, and I volunteered to be their Team Manager and handle all travel and game day logistics. Long story short, I missed one of our re-fueling points because I took a nap in the car. Yes, I can’t even drive a marathon without getting tired.
So, to make sure this analogy holds, I sought training advice for beginners from Runner’s World. Here’s what I learned:
- Training usually requires 16 to 20 weeks of running three to five times a week. That’s 48 to 100 training sessions to complete ONE marathon!
- Beginners should focus on finishing the marathon, not their time to complete it. Remember, the first person to run a marathon died. Living to tell your tale is winning.
- You will miss training sessions. If you don’t miss too many (4 weeks or more), you’ll be fine.
- Training is hard. The key is distinguishing “good pain” from “bad pain.”
- Strength training and conditioning are just as important as running is in your training program.
Training for lasting innovation
Full disclosure, I have done a lot of innovation as both an intrapreneur and a consultant. As a result, I can assure you that leaders of newly established innovation capabilities endure a training experience similar to marathoners’.
- Stabilizing your innovation capability to be “the way we do business” takes significantly longer than establishing it. You will have to engage, encourage, advocate, remind, steer, and communicate 48-100 times more now than you had to in the past.
- Organizations should focus on proving that they can successfully create, test, and launch a commercially viable innovation, not finding the next $1B idea. Remember, ideas are a dime a dozen, and the organization is burned out on innovation theater. Launching something that makes money proves that innovation is possible and that is winning.
- You will have failures. If you take the time to learn from them, to find the root cause, and make changes, so they don’t happen again, you’ll be fine.
- Innovation is hard because change and uncertainty are hard. The key is distinguishing “good pain” from bad pain. It’s called “growing pains,” not “growing tickles” for a reason.
- Managing and growing your core business is just as crucial as stabilizing and encouraging innovation. You need to see the whole picture to make the best decisions to reach your short-term AND long-term goals.
What’s your innovation training regimen?
Being a leader is like being a runner – it’s an identity.
Being a leader that supports and enables innovation is like being a marathoner – people think you’re crazy to endure the pain and discipline of training, but they will never know the high that comes from achieving a seemingly impossible goal.
What did I miss in the list above? What’s your innovation training regimen?
by Robyn Bolton | Jan 23, 2022 | Innovation, Leadership
The Great Resignation is real. At the start of 2021, 40% of employees thought about quitting. Between April and September, more than 24MM turned those thoughts into action.
You don’t want your people to be in either of those stats. You value them and their experience, so you work hard to ensure that the most common causes of attrition – poor wages and benefits, toxic culture, worries about job insecurity, and feeling unappreciated – are not issues in your business.
And you don’t stop there. You offer opportunities for professional development, and you’re investing more than ever in innovation.
But if you believe new research published in the MIT Sloan Management Review, your investment in innovation is causing your people to quit.
Are resignations the price you pay to be innovative?
According to the study’s authors, “high levels of innovation” is the third-highest predictor of attrition behind only toxic work culture and job insecurity and reorganization.
“In the Culture 500 sample, we found that the more positively employees talked about innovation in their company, the more likely they were to quit.”
They go on to explain that “Staying at the bleeding edge of innovation typically requires employees to put in longer hours, work at a faster pace, and endure more stress than they would in a slower-moving company. The work may be exciting and satisfying but also difficult to sustain in the long term.”
Ok, fair. But let’s dig a bit deeper.
The three most innovative companies in the Culture 500 (the dataset used for analysis) are Nvidia, Tesla, and SpaceX. At least two of those (Tesla and SpaceX) are infamous for their toxic work cultures, to the extent that lawsuits are pending against both.
That’s especially important because “Toxic Corporate Environment” is the #1 predictor of attribution in that it is “10.4x more likely to contribute to attrition than compensation.” The #2 predictor, “Job insecurity and reorganization,” is only 3.5x more likely to contribute to attrition, and innovation is 3.2x more likely.
Sure, the data says that innovation is a predictor of resignations. Still, I think the reality is that companies are using “innovation” as an excuse for their toxic work cultures. It is toxicity, not innovation, that is causing people to quit.
Resignations are the price you pay for pretending to be innovative
Far more common, at least in my experience, is that companies and leaders that engage in innovation theater are far more likely to lose people due to “innovation.”
Here’s how it plays out:
- Innovation events give people hope. Hackathons, shark tanks, even ideation sessions create the impression that the company is serious about innovation. The company’s investment of time and resources into these events sends a message that it wants to hear employees’ ideas and is willing to invest in the good ones and see them through.
- Innovation training gives people skills and changes their mindsets. Incubators, accelerators, and one-off trainings in topics like design thinking and lean startup teach employees how to innovate and give people the experience of innovating. Through that experience, people realize that they are creative, have good ideas, and can drive change. They begin to see what is possible and believe they can make it happen.
- Everything goes back to “business as usual,” and people are left disappointed and disillusioned because the company wasn’t committed to anything beyond an event. People are also left newly aware of the possibilities and empowered to take advantage of them. They realize that the company is all talk when it comes to innovation, but they have the power to walk. And they do.
You’re doing the right things. Now keep doing them.
Your investments in professional development and innovation are spot on.
And, In the near term, they will lower attrition and help you attract phenomenal talent,
But if you want to keep your people for the long term, you need to keep investing in professional development and innovation.
Design hackathons and shark tanks with a plan for what happens after the event, how people will stay engaged, and how the company will continue to see and learn from the resulting projects.
Run incubators, accelerators, and trainings and give people permission to apply the methods and tools in their day jobs, reward them for using what they learned and teaching others, and hold managers accountable for supporting and encouraging these new behaviors and mindsets.
These are just a few ways you can be innovative AND retain your best people. I’m sure there are lots more.
What are they? How are you being innovative?
