What have you done that is innovative?  Senior IT leaders believe their teams are innovative but often, they are merely operating within the boundaries that already exist.  Leaders may task their teams with finding innovative solutions but without a focused effort, it is difficult to accomplish.  IT staff are generally focused on keeping the lights on by solving day to day issues or completing their tasks for the next project.

Innovation requires a concerted effort with support from senior leaders to explore new ideas that may or may not deliver the intended result.  If staff haven’t been working in this type of environment, this doesn’t come easy.  It isn’t as simple as just giving the team a vision, telling them to explore possibilities, and then giving them a deadline.  Unfortunately, this is how many IT organizations work.

It can be difficult for leaders to fully internalize how their reactions can shape the attitudes and behaviors of their teams.  IT staff need to think out of the box but in the past if they presented a solution that wasn’t within the existing norms of the organization, it was shot down.  Perhaps it didn’t follow a technology standard or it required a high level conversation with another executive.  To the staff, it seemed minor.  Regardless of how the message was delivered, what they heard is that they need to follow the standard way of doing business.

Three Key Actions for I.T. Leaders to Begin the Journey Toward True Innovation
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1. For key individuals in I.T., carve out some portion of their time to work on innovation.  The key individuals do not need to have strong technical understanding in any area.  Be very purposeful in choosing these individuals by creating a cross functional group with a very diverse skillset.  In addition, look for people that are comfortable talking through concepts that may or may not ever be implemented.  It is important to ensure that you don’t choose people that get mired down in the details.
2. Link I.T. initiatives that require an innovative solution to corporate strategy and objectives.  Focusing IT innovation efforts in this area will open up possibilities for significant improvements to the overall organization.  It is also a great opportunity to work with business partners on creating an innovative shared solution which incorporates both technology and business process.
3. Initially, use an outside facilitator to work with the team on the innovation process.  If I.T. leadership has never truly focused on innovation in the past, the team is going to be uncomfortable and unprepared.  Invest in an outside facilitator to help both leadership and the team make the necessary adjustments.  The facilitator should eventually be tasked with creating a training plan for 2-3 key staff members so I.T. can build the facilitation capability in house.

Take steps to create true innovation within I.T. and for the broader organization.  While there is an initial investment, the return will be well worth it.

At AdOPT, we are transformation consultants focused on strategy, innovation, process, and culture change to improve IT efficiency, increase effectiveness, and optimize costs. For more information, phone 520-591-2427 or email us at info@adoptitsm.com.

​We’ve all heard the research.  Roughly 70% of project fail to achieve the intended return.  Approximately 50% of the time this is due to leadership protecting the status quo.  Change is hard.  Even for leaders, it is difficult. 
 
As leaders, we don’t set out to protect “the way we’ve always done it” but we have habits too.  We are used to making decisions using similar criteria or in a certain way.  We also have very busy schedules which sometimes affect our decision making as it relates to change.  We make choices every day and sometimes we have to weigh the time it may take to deal with an issue one way vs another.  We may choose the easier option as we don’t have the time to dedicate to the more difficult path and the results will be similar anyway. 
 
The challenge for leaders is that our staff is looking at our actions.  They are evaluating what they are hearing and they are looking to see if actions are aligning with what is being said.  They are taking their ques from what is being done versus what is being said.  Leaders go through the same change cycle as everybody else.  It can take time to fully comprehend the changes taking place and how you should react.  While you are going through the change cycle, you are sending signals to our staff about the importance of adopting the changes taking place. 
 
Invest in Four Key Areas to Maximize the Opportunity for Success

1. Be authentic and transparent.  Communicate that you are still figuring out what the changes mean for everyone.  You may not have all the answers and the team needs to work together to figure it out. 
2. Form a coalition of sponsors.  You can’t be everywhere at once and when an organization is undergoing significant changes, sometimes you will just need a break.  At the onset of change, engage key leaders to help.  They can facilitate changes in their department and they can participate as part of a broader team that evangelizes the need to change.  When you aren’t in the room, they can take the lead to deliver the message and help to manage resistance. 
3. As the organizational impact of change is recognized, ensure leaders at all levels understand what is changing and why.  Every leader should craft key talking points for their direct reports to ensure there is consistency and understanding among the entire leadership team.
4. Every leader with staff affected by change needs to be visible throughout the change and facilitate an ongoing conversation.  If it sounds like additional work, you are being realistic.  As a leader, you need to be visible and engage the team.  It is more than sending an email or attending a status meeting.  The team is looking to you for guidance and encouragement.  Town halls, lunch and learns, open office hours, random visits to team members, etc should be routine throughout the entire lifecycle of the project. 

 
Yes. It is extra work.  The coalition can help and you can grow the coalition over time.  It won’t replace you being present but it can lessen the load.  Also, consider the organizational consequences of delayed or partial change adoption.  Investing time and energy into being visible and fostering a conversation will pay dividends and you may even achieve a greater return from the change than you expected.
 
Research over the last 15+ years has repeatedly shown that effective leadership is pivotal to the adoption and success of change.  Leaders at every level need to effectively engage and take action.  It is an investment of time and energy but the returns are well worth it.

In part 1 of “Are You Killing or Encouraging Innovation”, we looked at three innovation killers that often aren’t recognized by companies.  Read part 2 to explore some steps you can take to foster innovation in your company.

Organizations can foster innovation but it does require some focus and investment.  If your organization does not have a focused effort to foster innovation, you can still take action.  Leaders can encourage innovation by investing mostly time and perhaps changing some of their perspectives.  

Three Techniques to Encourage Innovation…

1. On a routine basis, allow your staff to invest some time observing how the customer uses your product or service.  Observing a business process that includes understanding how the technology supports the process can yield incredible results.  Consider asking a small number of staff to spend 1-2 hours per week observing how technology is used by the customer.  Task each staff member to provide one suggestion every week which will improve the end user experience.  Host a weekly meeting with this team to review suggestions and brainstorm potential solutions.  
2. Rather than tasking one person to resolve an important issue, host a solutioning session by asking for volunteers from the group of staff that are affected by the issue.  Change the rules by removing barriers to fostering creative solutions by letting the team know that nothing is out of bounds.  Yes, limitations may exist but they can be addressed later in the process.  Spend time brainstorming all of the options, categorizing them into similar solutions, and then determine a feasible course of action.
3. Fostering innovation can feel daunting as employees identify opportunities and solutions that can sometimes cause even the best leaders to heave a big sigh….  The opportunities are sometimes hard for a leader to recognize and the solutions may fall outside of the norm.  Both of these scenarios can be seen as resulting in extra work.  Rather than becoming overwhelmed, leaders need to change their perspective by developing their employees to not only recognize opportunities and find innovative solutions but further empowering them to create a business case and plan to charter the initiative.

Even if your organization subscribes to some of the “innovation killers” noted in part one of this blog series, as a leader you can encourage innovation within your team, your peer group, and even your management team.  It starts with changing your perspective and investing some time.  The investment is minimal considering the potential return.

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Innovation – many organizations believe they are innovative but what are they doing differently?  What makes them believe their team is being innovative with solutions?

Organizations today often have deeply embedded ways of working.  Staff are very used to the processes and procedures that govern how their workday flows.  Most people have difficulty with change even if they don’t realize it and organizations really don’t encourage the average worker to step outside of the boundary to be innovative.  In reality, organizations often stifle innovation and they don’t even realize it.

Three “innovation killers"...

1)  If key staff are often working at their desk, they are productive.  There are a fair number of leaders that believe this is true even in a world where mobility is now the norm.  If key staff are working at their desk all the time, they may be getting their core work done but their ability to innovate is dramatically diminished.  They are in an office.  Why aren’t they looking at the customer experience by observing how they actually use a product or service?  How are they brainstorming ideas with their coworkers?  How are these staff members driving change?  Recognizing that some of this work can be done through remote means, if the staff is in an office, they have a unique opportunity for direct observation and face time with colleagues.  Even in a digital world, being at your desk all the time doesn’t encourage innovation.

2)  Asking for suggestions for improvement but creating too many obstacles for anyone to use the system and when they do submit a suggestion, it is never acknowledged or they receive a “canned auto-reply”.  Many companies ask for suggestions.  In order to submit a suggestion, they require staff to request a username and password or a staff member must send their suggestion to a generic distribution list.  If there are too many obstacles or if the actions of leadership do not align with encouraging suggestions, staff will not bother.

3)  Failure is never an option.  Many organizations have so much structure that testing any potential solution requires tremendous bureaucracy.  It isn’t worth it.  How can an organization be innovative if they can’t test and experiment?  Failure must be used as a learning opportunity.  While organizations must protect certain aspects of their business, many go way too far and without realizing it, they build policies, procedures, and reward systems that focus on maintaining the status quo.
 
If any of the “innovation killers” even vaguely sound familiar, it may be time to really analyze what your company considers innovation.  Many organizations say they are innovative but what they are really doing is solving problems within the boundaries of their existing systems.  What may seem innovative is merely just problem solving.  Once the problem is solved, leaders feel relief and often, the “hero” that saved the day is praised for finding an innovative solution.
 
In part 2 of “Are You Killing or Encouraging Innovation”, we discuss three ways to encourage innovation.  Encouraging innovation may require you to step out of the box.  Are you ready?  

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In today’s marketplace, customers expect IT to help them find solutions that will allow them obtain a competitive edge.  Managing to the minimum service level is an expectation but IT can provide so much more value by employing a consultative approach to problem solving for both technical and business problems.  IT teams need to listen to their customers and they need to take innovative approaches to find a solution that positions the organization to succeed.
 
Design thinking is an approach that has been around for over thirty years yet people believe it applies only to designing a product or determining the aesthetics of a website or an application.  It can be applied in these situations but the applications within IT can be much broader.  When applied to problem solving or service or process design, the design thinking approach can deliver innovative solutions that meet or exceed both the customer and the IT team’s expectations.
 
At the most basic level, design thinking is a customer focused approach that helps to identify innovative solutions and new opportunities.  It starts with reframing the initial problem statement to ensure that the solution is not predetermined.  If customers are complaining about how long it takes make a purchase on a website, the problem statement isn’t “fix website”.  With design thinking, defining the right problem statement helps to identify a creative solution. 
 
Why are customers complaining about how long it takes to make a purchase on the website? 
 
Asking “why” changes our perspective of the issue.  Customers are complaining because it takes are large number of clicks to make a purchase.
 
Why does it take a large number of mouse clicks to make a purchase?
 
Customer must enter their shipping and payment information as well as demographic data that is unrelated to their purchase. 
 
Why are customers having to enter demographic data that is unrelated to their purchase?
 
The marketing team needs the demographic data to maximize the success of bulk email campaigns.
 
Asking “why” multiple times helps us reframe our problem statement.  It reframes the initial problem statement.  The new problem statement could be “find a way to provide demographic data for marketing campaigns” or something similar.  Focusing on the problem at the most basic level will lead to a very different solution. 
 
Once the problem is framed appropriately, the ideation process begins by employing divergent thinking to ensure that many potential solutions are explored.  There are numerous opportunities and potential solutions discussed.   Divergent thinking is brainstorming and when conducted appropriately, during this phase there are no wrong answers.  Design thinking encourages involving customers and exploring many solutions.
 
This approach also incorporates convergent thinking to help narrow down the potential solutions to realize the best option.  Patterns and themes are identified from the brainstorming session.  When focusing on finding the right solution, desirability, viability, and feasibility of the solution must be considered.  A test and learn approach is adopted to allow for learning which encourages further innovation and strengthens the final solution.
 
Adopting design thinking as a foundational element of IT’s overall approach results in solutions which meet or exceed the customer’s expectations.  Key metrics relating to business outcomes, customer and employee satisfaction, engagement scores, productivity, and customer loyalty will show that the innovative solutions developed using the design thinking approach are not only positioning the customer to succeed but improving the productivity and satisfaction of IT employees. 

At AdOPT, we are transformation consultants focused on strategy, innovation, process, and culture to increase effectiveness, improve efficiency, and optimize costs.  Discover how design thinking can improve your IT organization.   Ask us to facilitate a design thinking exercise with your team by emailing info@adoptitsm.com or by calling 520-591-2427.