It started with emails from the airlines letting us know that they’re cleaning the planes and taking precautions when handing out drinks and snacks
Then came the emails from every company you’ve ever given you email to.
Finally came the email with offers, like the one I received from a consulting firm stating that, in these uncertain times, the most important thing you can do is find new revenue streams and they can help, so give them a call.
Yes, it’s important to communicate, to be transparent about what you are doing and what you’re not doing, and to be honest about what you do and don’t know.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone needs to send an email to their customers with news, updates, and offers.
The barrage of emails reminded me of a scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a frothy rom-com with a great cast and endlessly quotable quips. In this scene, the lead character, Peter (played by Jason Segal) decides to take lessons from the resort’s surfing instructor, Koonu (played by Paul Rudd).
Koonu:Okay, when we’re out there, I want you to ignore your instincts. I’m gonna be your instincts. Koonu will be your instincts. Don’t do anything. Don’t try to surf, don’t do it. The less you do, the more you do. Let’s see you pop up. Pop it up.
Peter hops up to standing on the surfboard
Koonu: That’s not it at all. Do less. Get down. Try less. Do it again. Pop up.
Peter starts to slowly do a push-up
Koonu: No, too slow. Do less. Pop up. Pop up.
Peter gets to his knees
Koonu:You’re doing too much. Do less. Pop down. Pop up now.
Peter tries again
Koonu: Stop. Get down. Get down there. Remember, don’t do anything. Nothing. Pop up.
Peter lies motionless on the surfboard
Koonu: Well, you… No, you gotta do more than that, ’cause you’re just laying right out. It looks like you’re boogie-boarding. Just do it. Feel it. Pop up.
Peter does exactly what he did the first time and hops to standing
Koonu: Yeah. That wasn’t quite it, but we’re gonna figure it out, out there.
I imagine this was the conversation that a lot of corporate/crisis communication folks were having with executives in the last two weeks — Do more. Do less. Don’t do anything. That’s not quite it.
In the midst of all of this uncertainty, how can companies know what to do now?
To be very clear, I am not an expert on communication or crisis management BUT I am an expert at understanding your customers, being a customer, and receiving lots of emails. I’m also a business owner who, for a brief moment, wondered if I needed to send a COVID-19 update to my clients and network.
Before making my decision, I asked myself these 3 questions:
Am I in a business that is the focus of a majority of the news stories? These businesses include anything in travel (airlines, cruises, hotels), food and food service (restaurants, fast food, grocery), medical supplies (masks, gowns, gloves, ventilators).
If the answer is YES, send an email because people are thinking about you and wondering what you’re doing to keep them safe.
My answer was NO, so I went to the next question.
Am I a business that is woven into people’s daily lives? These could be essential businesses like banks, medical professionals (dentists, orthodontists, chiropractors), and cleaning services (home cleaners, dry cleaners, laundromats). The list could also include non-essential businesses like personal service providers (hair stylists, nail techs, aestheticians).
If you are a steady part of people’s lives, then YES, you should send them an email to let them know what you’re doing in light of the situation.
I’m a part of most of my clients’ lives during projects which have start and end dates, so I went to the next question.
Am I making fundamental changes to my business that will directly and immediately impact my customers? These changes could include changing your hours of operation (e.g. adding Senior hours), changing how you transact business (e.g. no more curb-side pick-up). Or the changes could be bigger, like closing because of a government order, or delaying or even cancelling shipments because manufacturing and shipping processes are delayed due lack of materials or staff.
If you’re making a fundamental change to how you do business, you should let your customers know and help them reset expectations.
Other than moving all meetings to Zoom and no longer traveling, no element of my business operations changed.
DECISION: Do less.
I did not send a “How MileZero is responding to the Coronavirus” email because, based on the answers to the three questions above, my clients had far more pressing concerns than how often I’m using Clorox wipes to clean my keyboard.
But I didn’t do Nothing.
In the work I do with clients, I get to know them extremely well. We move from the typical consultant-client interaction to a trusting (professional) relationship between two human-beings.
What I did tried to reflect that.
I sent quick personal notes to each individual, wishing them health and safety, asking how they and their families are doing, and offering to hop on the phone for a quick chat, to be a sounding board, or simply a shoulder to lean on. It’s not much but it’s genuine and appropriate for the circumstances.
I did not try to tell them what they should be doing right now. Nor did I try to sell them a new service. I simply offered support and connection because, in a time of social distancing, connection is what we need right now.
What do we do now?
The same thing we should have been doing all along. We think of our customers (i.e. the people at the other end of the email) and what they want and need, and we do our best to serve them.
Sometimes we’ll get it right. Sometimes we’ll get it wrong. But if we think first of our customer, not ourselves or our businesses, we’re gonna figure it out.
I know that I’m not supposed to say that, especially because I tell other people that they absolutely must run experiments.
After all, experiments are an essential part of the innovation process. There are some things that you absolutely cannot learn unless you go out into the world, interact with other humans, and operate in a real-world setting.
But run an experiment, especially if it’s on something I created? No, thank you. I’ll just sit right here in the safety of my office and polish my idea to within an inch of its theoretical life.
It’s all of us
To understand why running experiments can be stress-inducing, itself helpful to understand what happens in our brains when we’re conducting them.
No matter the type of experiment you’re running, the context in which you’re experimenting, or what you’re trying to learn, simply by running an experiment you are saying to the world (or your team, or your boss, or you peers), “I’m not entirely certain that I’m right. I may be wrong.” That is a very uncomfortable, even vulnerable, position to be in and our brains, always on the look-out for danger, activate our fight-or-flight response, resulting in something that feels a lot like fear.
According to Scott Steinberg, bestselling author of Make Change Work for You, the seven most common fears people report feeling in the workplace are:
Fear of Failure
Embarrassment
Underperformance
Rejection
Change and Uncertainty
Confrontation
Isolation
When you run an experiment, especially if you’re in a function/company/culture where experimentation is not the norm, you are at risk of experiencing at least one, and often all, of the fears listed.
Don’t believe me?
The experiment that never happened
Imagine that you work for a big multi-national food company and you’ve been tasked with creating a new line of snacks targeting Baby Boomers and offering functional benefits like improved version, greater stability, better muscle tone. You’ve done the research and you know the ingredients that can deliver each of the desired benefits. You’ve done some small scale taste testing and you’re confident that the products taste good and have the right texture. You’ve even checked with Legal and they’re confident that you can make the claims you want to make.
The last thing you need to test is that people will pay what you need them to pay for the new products.
You could ask people what they’re willing to pay but you know you’ll get better data if you actually sell the new products to people, asking them to exchange their hard earned money for a bag of nuts. You decide that the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to do this is to set up a little stand in the company cafeteria, sell your new products, and see what happens.
That’s when things come to a grinding halt.
“What if we don’t sell as much as we need to?” one person asks (fear of failure and underperformance).
“What if people don’t like the products?” says another (fear of embarrassment)
“What if no one buys?” says a third (fear of rejection)
“There is no way that Legal will let us do this. No one has ever done this before. Plus, we’re talking about selling something that contains allergens.” says a fourth (fear of uncertainty and confrontation)
“You’re right,” you finally agree. “It’s better than we keep this work on the down-low. If people find out what we’re doing, they may feel like we’re stepping on their toes and we’ll get shut down.” (fear of isolation).
True story (but I bet you already knew that).
I’ve seen the same thing happen at other clients and in other industries. People want to experiment. They know they need to experiment. But they don’t experiment. Instead, they come up with all sorts of reasons, some very real and true and some greatly exaggerated, why they can’t.
Experiment with experimenting
First, let’s be clear — there are are LOTS of good reasons why some experiments can not or should not happen. If you know for a fact that an experiment is going to break a law, put someone at risk, or potentially result in an unrecoverable financial loss, do not do it! Common sense, people.
But fears are not facts. They are feelings. Feelings that can be acknowledged, addressed, and overcome.
So how do you overcome the feelings that can get in the way of experiments?
Start with a Plan B.
I don’t know about you, but I always feel better when I have a fall-back plan. Many people decide on the type of experiment they need to run and then go for it. Until they hit a roadblock. Then they stop….not just the experiment but ALL experiments. This type of “all or nothing” mindset — if we can’t do this experiment we can’t experiment at all — creates incredible stress because it makes the mere act of experimenting super high stakes.
Instead, start by getting very clear and very specific on what you need to learn — not “Will people pay for this?” but “Will people pay $4.99 for an 8oz bag of nuts.” Then, brainstorm all the ways you could learn what you need to learn, without worrying about the quality of the data you’ll get. Once you have a long list of different possible experiments, assess how complex it would be to run each (high/medium/low) and the reliability/quality of the data you’ll get (high/medium/low). You now have a list of different experiments to run and a sense of the trade-offs inherent in each one. As a result, you should feel more confident in choosing an experiment to pursue because you already have your Plan B (and C and D) identified in case you discover a legal, regulatory, or financial reason that your stops you from pursuing your original experiment.
Change how you talk about experiments.
When people ask we need to run experiments, we often answer with things like, “because I don’t know if…” or “because we need to if….” There’s nothing wrong with those answers per se but admitting that you don’t know something or are unsure of something can feel really really risky. After all, uncertainty can be perceived as risky, dangerous, and even a sign of incompetence.
So try phrasing answers in a way to show that you are somewhere good and the experiment will move you somewhere better. For example, “We know that we need to sell an 8oz bag for $4.99 in order to make our numbers and based on your benchmarks we’re confident that we can do that, but we want proof and this experiment is the best way to get it.” Of course you don’t want to lie but you also shouldn’t discount all the work and learning you’ve done to get to this point. Share that knowledge, get credit for the work, and explain the benefit of continuing the journey.
Turn around your thinking.
Ok, this is going to sound a bit “woo” but, if you’re like me and tend to focus on the worst-case scenario (because then you’re prepared for it!), you need to get out of your head, see your feelings for what they are, and get focused back on the facts before you can move forward. One technique for this is a series of questions known as “The Turnaround”in which you ask (and answer) a series of 5 questions. The questions below are how they would have been phrased in the example above, the root of the question (the part that doesn’t change) is underlined:
Is it true that we will get shut down if we run this experiment? (Maybe)
Can I absolutely know whether it is true before I run the experiment? (No)
What happens when I believe that it is true that we will be shut down? (I don’t want to run the experiment)
What would I do if I didn’t believe that we’ll be shut down? (I would run the experiment)
What are 3 examples of when this thought in this context was not true (1. When our first concept got terrible results, 2. when our initial financial estimates didn’t achieve the required profit margin, 3. when the first taste tests got mediocre results)
By the end of this, you now have 3 facts that refute your 1 feeling. And as I like to say, “don’t bring feelings to a fact party ’cause we ain’t got time for that.”
In conclusion
Everyone gets uncomfortable at some point in the innovation process. For some people it’s the uncertainty at the start, for others it’s the process of setting KPIs without knowing whether you can hit them or not, and for others (like me) it’s the moment when you have to take your beautiful precious idea out into the world and face the fact that it might fail.
By experimenting with the way we approach planning for experiments, talking about them, and even thinking about them, both my clients and I have been able to lessen the fear and anxiety we feel when we don’t know what will happen next and find the courage to move forward, make things happen, and learn what needs to be learned.
Several years ago and courtesy of the TED Women Conference, I got my hands on SY Partner’s Superpowers Card Deck. Before forcing everyone on my team to run through the deck, I experimented on myself.
My Superpower? Complexity Busting.
And yes, I do truly love to create order from chaos or, as SY phrases it, “tame unruly thoughts.”
Which is why I now feel compelled to tame the unruly thoughts that many people have about customer research.
Most companies believe that it’s important to understand their customers and many of them invest millions of dollars in trying to do just that. Unfortunately, most of them are wasting their money by investing in the wrong tools.
Here’s a cheat sheet so you don’t make the same mistake
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
In-depth, one-on-one interviews
WHY you should use it: To discover and explore what you don’t know. When you are exploring a new space (or one you haven’t explored in a while) and you need to discover both what is going on and why, one-on-one in-depth interviews are the best (and only) way to start to bring clarity to a situation.
HOW to do it: Don’t let the name fool you, these should rarely be truly one-to-one interviews. I prefer to structure them as two-on-ones: person 1 is being interviewed, person 2 is the interviewer and asks most of the questions, and person 3 takes notes and occasionally chimes in with questions that person 2 might have forgotten to ask.
WHEN to use it: At the beginning of any project that feels ambiguous or for which you don’t have a lot of pre-existing and up-to-date data to rely on. It’s also a good exercise to do at least once a year as a way of ensuring that your data actually is up to date and reflects changing customer attitudes and behaviors.
Pro Tips:
Face to face is best so that you can see non-verbal cues that indicate if someone is holding back information, struggling to understand, or having an epiphany.
Don’t rush these. Plan 1–2 hours for these interviews as the conversations need to be EPIC (empathetic, perspective-giving, insightful, and create connection).
Follow the rule of 10. Qualitative data tends ot be directional at best so don’t waste a lot of time and money interviewing hundreds of people. Instead, interview 10 customers then reassess to see if you need to interview more. In my experience, people 1–4 tend to provide the most new data, people 5–7 help focus you on the most important things, and people 8–10 confirm the most important things or add interesting spins that can be explored through other means.
Focus Groups
WHY you should use it:To develop, enhance, and refine ideas and prototypes. Creativity abounds when people can bounce ideas around and build on what others say. For this reason, group research, like focus groups, is best when you’re giving people something to react to but you’ve already done the homework to identify the right problem and you’re simply giving them a solution to which to respond.
HOW to do it:Focus groups should be heavily facilitated with structured exercises to keep the group focused. There’s lots of ways to host focus groups — in-person in research facilities, on-line communities, even group texts. What matters most is how you facilitate the group, ensuring that the collective energy is focused on generating the information and insights that will be most helpful.
WHEN to use it: After you have prototyped solutions to the challenges identified through the one-on-one interviews. You want to give people something to react to, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a 3D printed prototype or a few sentences on a piece of paper. What matters is that you have a facilitator guiding people through exercises designed to understand what they like, what they don’t like, what they think, and what they feel.
Pro Tip:Make your prototype as ugly as possible. In general, people don’t want to be mean or hurt your feelings. As a result, the more refined your prototype, the more likely people are to think that you spent a lot of time and effort creating it. They’ll go out of their way to find things that they like, even defaulting to “I think people will like this….” (which is code for “I don’t like this but I’m sure someone else will). If you want honest feedback (and you do), make the prototype ugly.
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
Surveys
WHY you should use it: To understand the relative priority of things and to build confidence in your recommendations. As mentioned above, qualitative research insights are directional and, even though they’re usually at least 80% right, some projects, executives, or companies want greater certainty before taking action. Surveys can get you that certainty in a far more efficient and effective way than additional qualitative research because they enable you to reach hundreds, even thousand, of people at once and collect data on a standard list of questions and answers.
HOW to do it: This depends on the complexity of your survey. Self-serve options, like Survey Monkey and Typeform, are great for simple (e.g. 10 question) surveys to a broad group of people (e.g. women 18–34) or to an existing database of people (e.g. customers who have returned warranty cards). For surveys that are more complex (dozens of questions, use question logic), require a large base (100+) of respondents and/or are directed to a hard to find or access population (e.g. cardiac surgeons, people who have spent over $300 on gluten-free products in the past 3 months), it is best to work with a quantitative research firm that has the expertise, experience, and technology required to design and field the survey as well as analyze the data.
WHEN to use it: When you are confident that you know the right questions to ask AND the right answer options to provide. In other words, after you’ve done qualitative research or when you’re doing something as a matter of course (e.g. post-purchase survey). And even then, it’s a good idea to include open-text response options just in case the answers you provide don’t include the answer your customers want to give.
Pro Tip: If you’re working with a qualitative researcher who claims they also do quantitative research, ask them to provide specific examples of past work that it at the same scope and complexity of the work you want to do. Quantitative research tends to become the “sole source of truth” in companies so it’s worth investing in the right experts for this type of work.
In closing…
Customer research is an incredibly complex field which means it’s easy to get overwhelmed and make the wrong decision. Hopefully this simple overview busts some of that complexity and quiets some unruly thoughts.
I’m curious…did this help you find the right type of research for your needs? What did I miss? What would you add? Share your thoughts and help all pf us get smarter and better at this important work!
According to research by Strava, the social network for athletes, most people will have given up on their New Year’s Resolutions by Sunday, January 19.
While that’s probably good news for all the dedicated workout enthusiasts who will be glad to get their gyms back, given that the most common New Year’s resolution is to exercise more, it’s a bit discouraging for the rest of us.
But just because you’re about to stop hitting the gym to drop weight and build muscle (or whatever your resolutions are), it doesn’t mean that you can’t focus on improving other muscles. May I suggest, your innovation muscles?
Innovation mindsets, skills and behaviors can be learned, but if you don’t continuously use them, like muscles, they can weaken and atrophy. That’s why it’s important to create opportunities to flex them.
One of the tools I use with clients who are committed to building innovation as a capability, rather than scheduling it as an event, is QMWD: the quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily practices required to build and sustain innovation as a habit.
Quarterly
Leave the office and talk to at least three of your customers. It’s tempting to rely on survey results, research reports and listening in on customer service calls as a means to understand what your customers truly think and feel. But there’s incredible (and unintended) bias in those results.
Schedule a day each quarter to get out of the office and meet your customers. Ask them what they like and what they don’t. More importantly, watch them use your products, and share what you hear and see with your colleagues.
Monthly
Share a mistake you made with your team and what you learned from it. Silicon Valley mantras like “Fail fast and fail often” make for great office décor, but let’s be honest: No one likes to fail, and very few companies reward it.
Instead of repeating these slogans, reframe them as “Learn fast and learn often,” and model the behavior by sharing what you learned from things you did that didn’t go as expected. You’ll build a culture of psychological safety, make smart risks acceptable and increase your team’s resilience — all things required to innovate in a sustainable, repeatable and predictable manner.
Do one thing just for the fun of it. In the research that fed into their book, The Innovator’s DNA, professors Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen found that the most common characteristic among the great innovators of our time was their ability to associate, “to make surprising connections across areas of knowledge, industries, even geographies.” Importantly, their associative thinking skills were fed by one or more discovery skills: questioning (asking why, why not and what if), observing, experimenting and networking.
Fuel your associative thinking ability by doing something unrelated to your job or other obligations. Do something simply because it interests you. You might be surprised where it takes you. After all, Steve Jobs studied calligraphy, meditation and car design and used all of those experiences in his day job.
Weekly
Make one small change for one day. Innovation requires change, and if you’re an innovator, that’s the exciting part. But most people struggle with change, a fact that can be frustrating for change agents.
In order to lead people through change, you need to empathize with them and their struggles, which is why you need to create regular moments of change in your work and life. One day each week, make a conscious change. Sit on the other side of the conference room table. Take a different route to the bathroom. Use a black pen instead of a blue one. Even small changes like this can be a bit annoying, and they’ll remind you that change isn’t always the fun adventure you think it is.
Daily
Ask, ‘How can we do this better?’ Innovation is something different that creates value. This is good news because it means that all it takes to be an innovator is to do something different and create value. The easiest way to do that is to find opportunities for improvement.
The next time you’re frustrated with or confused by a process, ask, “How can we do this better?” Better can mean simpler, faster, cheaper or even in a way that is more enjoyable, but whatever it means, the answer will point the way to creating value for you, your team and maybe even your company.
Block time on your calendar for these quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily habits. After all, the best reflection of your priorities is what’s in your calendar. And, if you stick with this, you’ll be among those who achieve their New Year’s goals.
A few weeks ago, I published a piece in Forbes with tips on how to learn from your toughest customers.
During most of the year, these “customers” tend to the people buying our products or using our services — people who don’t understand why our products or services cost so much, are so difficult to understand, or why they should choose them over other options.
During the holidays, though, these people tend to be our family members — people who don’t understand why we moved so far from home, don’t call or visit more often, or why we support a certain political party, politician, or cause.
Luckily, the same techniques we use to understand our business’ customers and craft solutions that help them solve their problems or achieve the progress they seek (their Jobs to be Done, according to Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen), can also be used to keep the peace at your next family gathering.
Here are some Customer Research Do’s and Don’ts to help you navigate your next visit with family:
1.DO establish the topic of conversation. DON’T lead with your opinion: When you start an in-depth qualitative interview with a customer, you don’t start the conversation with “I think what we do is awesome and that you’re a horrible person if you don’t agree with me.” You start with, “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I’m very excited to hear your opinions about my business.”
We all know you’re not excited to hear Uncle Lenny’s opinion on gun control but starting the conversation with your opinion isn’t going to help things. So, when Uncle Lenny brings up the topic, simply acknowledge the topic and ask if others are interested in having the conversation. Who knows, maybe Aunt Jenny will shut the conversation down before it gets started.
2.DO listen more than you talk. DON’T try to win the argument. The purpose of customer interviews is to learn from your customer, not to convince them to do something. That’s why you try to talk only 20% of the time and listen 80%.
When Uncle Lenny, undeterred by Aunt Jenny’s pleas to move on, continues to expound on why he believes what he believes about gun control, don’t try to drown him out, overwhelm him with data, or win him over to your side. Instead, listen to what he has to say, ask open-ended questions, and, every so often, chime in with your point of view.
3.DO be curious. DON’T make assumptions. During customer interviews, you don’t take things at face value. When a customer says something is easy, you ask what makes it easy. When as customer says they want something to be more convenient, you ask what “more convenient” would look like. You don’t assume you know what the customer means, you ask.
When Grandpa Joe says that anyone who believes (fill in the topic) is a (fill in the negative stereotype), don’t assume that he’s talking about you. Ask why he thinks that people who believe X are Y. Maybe he’s never met anyone who believes X and is simply repeating something he heard. As a result, he may be surprised that the family member he loves who doesn’t fit the stereotype does believe X. Maybe he HAS met someone who believes X and they do fit the stereotype. Then you can remind him that 1 person doesn’t represent everyone in a group and that while yes, that person may not be his cup of tea, there are other people (like you) who are.
4.DO share your opinions. DON’T be dogmatic about it. In the rare instance when a customer starts to assert patently false things — a company has satanic roots, a product kills pets, an executive committed a crime — it’s your responsibility to speak-up and correct the falsehood. When you correct a customer, you don’t stand up and shout in their face, you speak slowly and calmly, gently acknowledging their opinion before sharing the facts, and you do this only a few times before moving on to the next topic.
When Grandpa Joe refuses to relent on his “anyone who believes X is a Y” stance, you have every right to disagree but doing it with the same absolute language and heated emotions isn’t going to change his mind. Instead, consider framing your opinion as a question, “Grandpa, what if I believe X. What would you think then?” If he persists, then gently explain that you hear him, respectfully disagree with him, and believe X for the following reasons.
5.DO know your limits. DON’T be afraid to leave when they’ve been reached. Customer interviews have a time limit and, no matter how chatty, interesting, or charming your customer is, you end the conversation when the time limit has been reached. Maybe you schedule time for a follow-up conversation but more often than not, you thank them for their time, hand them their check, and show them out the door.
Family time also has a limit. When you reach the limit of your patience, energy, civility, or sanity, thank everyone for their time and show yourself out the door. Yes, you may miss out on Grandma’s pie or your sibling’s vacation photos, but that’s a small price to pay for keeping the peace. And you can always schedule time late for conversations with select family members.
In closing
Talking to customers isn’t easy. Neither is talking to your family. But by using the same techniques you use to understand and empathize with your customers, you can navigate the minefields of family gatherings, maintain your sanity, and maybe even make it to dessert.
Do you want a job that offers some sort of stability without the soul-sucking repetition you equate with a 9–5 job? Maybe you want the intellectual challenge, problem-solving rush, and “we beat the odds” euphoria of doing the impossible AND to stay in a certain city or just have a steady paycheck and benefits for a few years.
Then you, my friend, should be an Intrapreneur.
A career in innovation is not for the faint of heart. While start-ups and entrepreneurs get all the press, intrapreneurs ride a similar roller-coaster of uncertainty.
According to research conducted by Innovation Leader, the average tenure of executives in innovation specific roles is 4.4 years. Tenures get are a bit longer for VPs (5.4 year) and a bit shorter for Manager (3.3 years).
This data is consistent with my decades of experience working with corporate innovators, also known as intrapreneurs.
Year 1, senior executives jump on the innovation bandwagon and create lots of activities (shark tanks, ideation sessions), establish innovation and corporate venture capital (CVC) teams, and proclaim their commitment to innovation loudly and broadly.
Year 2, the fanfare dies down, the events have become memories, and the teams are hard at work generating opportunities and testing new businesses.
Year 3, the $500M silver bullet has yet to manifest, the company has yet to be described as the “Apple of [industry],” and the attention and investment once dedicated to innovation gets re-routed to the core business.
Year 4, it’s back to business as usual.
But for those brave souls who, like me and like my clients, decide to strap in and ride the ride…Welcome! Here are 4 tips to help you have the best and safest possible corporate innovation career
1. Build Your Internal Network
Yes, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of all that is new and happening in the market and the best way to do that is by building and maintain your external network of advisors, experts, and thought leaders.
But, as an intrapreneur, you also need to keep your finger on the pulse of all that is new and happening in your company. Invest time in building relationships outside of your immediate team. Reach out across functions and business units to meet people, build trust, and share ideas. Over time, these connections will become the advocates and sponsors you need to break through organizational barriers, sources of vital information about evolving corporate priorities, and even guides to new roles in the (highly likely) event that your innovation group gets “wound down.”
2. Show off transferrable skills
It’s easy to get pegged as the “Innovation Person” in the group. The person who gets called in when a team wants to “be creative” or faces a particularly difficult problem that requires “thinking differently.” There’s nothing wrong with being the Go To resource for these things but it makes you very expendable when the organization decides that it needs to “get back to its roots” and “return to what made us successful.”
Instead, identify and share the skills that are at the heart of what makes you great at innovation, the skills that create value. Perhaps you’re able to talk to a customer for 30 minutes and learn things never before conceived by R&D, offer to do that for another team or teach others your skills. Perhaps you’re able to simplify and communicate the most complex topics, offer to help someone with their presentation.
Sharing the skills that make you a great innovator and showing others how to apply them in their “not innovative” jobs not only helps establish a culture of innovation, it establishes you as an essential resource no matter where innovation falls on the priority list.
3. Don’t go Stealth
It’s tempting for intrapreneurs, like entrepreneurs, to work in Stealth Mode. I’ve heard lots of reasons for this:
We don’t have results yet
Management should stay focused on the core because we need the money made there to fund our work
If they don’t know what we’re doing, they can’t stop us.
This thinking is fundamentally flawed. Not only is “out of sight, out of mind” a very real thing in companies, it ignores the essential fact that start-ups in Stealth Mode are “hiding” from the market, not their investors.
Intrapreneurs need to stay on management’s radar screens. They need to generate and communicate results, even if it’s primarily learnings, on a regular basis. They need to consistently prove to management that they are as important to the short- and long-term prospects of the company as existing businesses.
The best evidence of a manager’s priorities are the appointments on her calendar. If you’re not on there, you’re not a priority.
4. Channel your inner Gambler
For an intrapreneur, there is no better advice than the following:
You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
Change is hard for everyone and it always takes longer than you think it should. It’s normal to feel frustrated. The key is to know when your frustration has evolved to cynicism and, even worse, burn-out.
Take breaks. Whether it’s a night off, a weekend away, a two weeks’ vacation, or a several month sabbatical. Step away from the table, unplug the devices, and rest. After all,
“Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away
And knowin’ what to keep.”
In closing
Even though Innovation should be viewed as a discipline, on par with Marketing and Finance, in terms of corporate capabilities and operations, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. Until that day comes, corporate innovation will remain a roller coaster that only the bravest dare to ride. Hopefully, these tips make that ride longer than just a few years.
