Do You Have an Innovation Scorecard?

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the International Society for Performance Improvement conference in Phoenix, Arizona and met one of the distinguished luminaries of the society, Donald Totsi of Vanguard Consulting.  Given the recent article in BusinessWeek (June 11, 2007) entitled, 3M’s Innovation Crisis: How Six Sigma Almost Smothered Its Idea Culture, I was captured by his findings about the core indicators of what it takes to implement innovative product and services.

Based on Don’s performance analysis of 10 companies that successfully launched RADICALLY new products and services to meet the demands of their marketplace, here are the top ten cultural practices, in order of their perceived importance of executing innovation:

1. Do our people see their job more in terms of the value they create than the tasks they perform?
2. Do our people show a sense of personal urgency and energy about achieving results?
3. Are we willing to make significant change in the way we do things now to better provide value to the customer and to the company?
4. Are we more concerned about doing what is right for the customer and the organization than we are doing only what the boss wants?
5. Do our people in the organization have a clear understanding of how their efforts impact the satisfaction and retention of our customers?
6. Is meeting the needs of the business and customers seen as far more important as conforming to bureaucratic/administrative requirements?
7. Do we see ourselves as able to influence events, not as victims of circumstance?
8. Do people feel encouraged to make on-the-spot decisions when necessary, without waiting for full approval from higher management?
9. At the end of every project, do we regularly look for lessons learned?
10. Once we have made a commitment to change, do we have a high sense of urgency and resolve to follow through?

From the perspective of executing innovation-led strategies, it is imperative as a manager (or performance improvement specialist) to define the variables within our organizations that need realignment to achieve the desired “innovative” results. 

I could easily see from the cultural practices described above how processes like Six Sigma could compromise creativity within a system. As a starting point, I suggest that a innovation bellwether scorecard can become a major tool for developing the agility to manage a business caught in a world known for its discontinuous change.

Comments

[Clint M. Johnson]

I would add an 11th item to the list: Do we as managers ENABLE our teams in innovative ways? The point here is that in addition to having urgency and energy and wanting to do the right thing, we have to give our teams the opportunities to act. Innovation comes from doing - whether its through official R&D programs/projects or quietly carving off time for our teams to be innovative, they (and we) need the time and freedom "to do." Nice points - William, glad to see everywhere you are turning up!

[Carlos Maxwell]

In reading over the qualities that innovative companies had, I approached them with the idea that innovative companies were "cutting edge" organizations sharing their secret formulas to success in cover stories for Fast Company or Wired. But in reading these one-by-one, these ten qualities are really just common sense value statements to which all organizations of different maturity levels can aspire. To me these statements boil down to two basic things: 1) focus and care about your customer and 2) do and fight for what you know is right.