I have this quotation from James Martin on the wall of my home office, from my time as a battle-scarred project manager.
'Coping (with a disaster) is visible and dramatic. Prevention is unpopular, because it usually means changing something that is not yet failing; it is thankless, because the only testimony of its effectiveness is a non-event'.
The same could be said of organisations, particularly successful ones, that struggle with the adoption of innovative ideas. In July 2018 the Harvard Business Review reported on a survey that looked at blockers to innovation in large organisations and concluded:
'Change-makers trying to conduct experiments are rarely greeted with open arms — especially when they’re working on an idea that may cannibalise stable businesses or upend today’s distribution model'.
I witnessed a perfect example from in the early days of retail outlet stores. A large, hugely successful multi-national retailer wanted to experiment with this store format in the UK. A bright, young high-flyer was chosen by the CEO to lead this innovation, given a substantial budget and told he could have the pick of the bunch to join his small team. Having cherry-picked individuals and assembled resources, a two store trial was started. It was an abject innovation failure. Not because of the concept or execution, but because of turf-wars and resentment by other senior managers.
The report charted the factors that leaders thought that most stymied innovation. Top of the pile, unsurprisingly, were cultural issues (politics and turf wars are symptomatic of cultural mores). One factor that appears to be missing is attitude to risk. It's not clear whether this was because survey recipients were not offered 'tolerance to risk' as an option, or it wasn't considered by them to be a major factor. From my discussions with many organisational leaders, most successful innovative organisations have an overt policy towards risk and its attendant inevitable misses.
The KPMG sponsored report (excerpt available here) goes into some detail about the negative actors and barriers to innovation. It is worth looking at each for your own organisation or division and what mitigations you can put in place for each. As with all cultural issues, particularly 'politics and turf wars' the only way to effect change is through leadership action and modelling behaviour.
The same could be said of organisations, particularly successful ones, that struggle with the adoption of innovative ideas. In July 2018 the Harvard Business Review reported on a survey that looked at blockers to innovation in large organisations and concluded:
'Change-makers trying to conduct experiments are rarely greeted with open arms — especially when they’re working on an idea that may cannibalise stable businesses or upend today’s distribution model'.
I witnessed a perfect example from in the early days of retail outlet stores. A large, hugely successful multi-national retailer wanted to experiment with this store format in the UK. A bright, young high-flyer was chosen by the CEO to lead this innovation, given a substantial budget and told he could have the pick of the bunch to join his small team. Having cherry-picked individuals and assembled resources, a two store trial was started. It was an abject innovation failure. Not because of the concept or execution, but because of turf-wars and resentment by other senior managers.
The report charted the factors that leaders thought that most stymied innovation. Top of the pile, unsurprisingly, were cultural issues (politics and turf wars are symptomatic of cultural mores). One factor that appears to be missing is attitude to risk. It's not clear whether this was because survey recipients were not offered 'tolerance to risk' as an option, or it wasn't considered by them to be a major factor. From my discussions with many organisational leaders, most successful innovative organisations have an overt policy towards risk and its attendant inevitable misses.
The KPMG sponsored report (excerpt available here) goes into some detail about the negative actors and barriers to innovation. It is worth looking at each for your own organisation or division and what mitigations you can put in place for each. As with all cultural issues, particularly 'politics and turf wars' the only way to effect change is through leadership action and modelling behaviour.
