'Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.' Soren Kirkegaard.If you want to improve innovation, there are two key areas to build capacity in:
- Business Literacy
- Project Management
Business literacy - what do we mean? What we mean by business literacy is our ‘understanding of business and the business'.
How well do people in your organisation know the answers to questions like:
- Where does our money come from and where does it go?
- How much is in our budget?
- Who are our important customers and how much do they spend with us?
- What is our profit or revenue or overhead per employee?
- How do we make decisions about spending money around here?
If I went to your front line customer service staff or even your cleaner, how well would they understand your business? How much would they care about your business?
Chances are, if the check out person, or drive through attendant or tele-marketer has no understanding or appreciation of the answers to these questions, they don't really care about the answers to these questions.
They will see their jobs just as a job. They will not see it as a place to contribute or be involved in.
Why won't my people get committed? We often hear managers wondering why their people are not committed or excited about the business.
They say 'we show people the Key Performance Indicators, we share the results and they just switch off.'
When we ask how much time they spend sharing business information they say 'our people aren't interested in that stuff.'
And why aren't they interested? Why do they switch off?
They're not interested because they don't understand it. They switch off because they don't understand how they impact or contribute to those figures.
Just like in sport, when people understand how they impact the scoreboard, they get excited about playing.
If I don't understand how to score runs in cricket or goals in basketball, of course I'm not going to be too excited about playing.
The more I know about how to score runs or goals, the more I want to play. High performing companies invest time and money in teaching people business skills.
Whether you're CEO or the cleaner, the more you understand money and how to manage it, the better the business will be managed at every level.
Boeing have trained over 100,000 people in Business Literacy using the Zodiak Business Simulation Game.
Springfield Remanufacturing stops their plant every week for 2 hours for everyone, including the cleaners, the receptionists, EVERYONE; to review their KPI's, the company income and expenses and make decisions to improve performance.
Everyone understands. Everyone gets the numbers. Everyone makes decisions about their part of the business. Everyone is involved in innovating.
The result: They have continued to grow to record profits after being on the brink of bankruptcy.
How?
By increasing the business literacy and business understanding of ALL employees.
Building the Project Management capacity of your people. Many managers say to us:
- ‘We have some great ideas, but too many of them don't get acted on.'
- ‘I'm sure our people have the ideas, its just they don't know how to make them happen.'
- ‘We're good at starting things. We're just not good at finishing them.'
- ‘Too many of our projects end up over budget and over time.'
What this tells us is that the Project Management capacity of the organisation is sadly lacking.
Project Management is not coming up with the idea. Project Management is putting the idea into action - successfully.
If you are to make a project a reality you need to have the 5 Project Management Skill-sets as an international standard as defined by the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge by the Project Management Institute)
- Initiate
How to recognise that a project or a phase should begin and commit to proceed. How to initiate a project. How to sell the idea and put a team together. How to scope out the project.
- Plan
How to map out a workable project plan to achieve the goals the project was undertaken to address. How to do a work breakdown plan. How to plan to allocate resources and budget. How to set up a responsibility matrix. How to do a critical path and Gantt chart.
- Execute
How to get the team moving to carry out the plan. How to coach and motivate people to stay on track. How to run effective project team meetings.
- Control
How to set up a reporting and control structure to ensure the project objectives are met. How to keep communication open and flowing. How to have feedback and reports. How to know if your project is on track or not. How to make corrections to get back on track.
- Close Out
How to finish a project and bring it to an orderly conclusion. How to share the results with the rest of the organisation. How to celebrate with your team. How to debrief and learn from your experience. How to ensure the results of your project are fully maximised.
Get more things done on time and on budget. When you build these capabilities in your teams, you build the capacity to get more things done on time and on budget.
I didn't learn these skills at school and most likely you didn't either.
You will get an immediate advantage over your competition if you begin to build a project management mindset and project management culture in your organisation.
There are 4 scenarios for the Leader of Innovation to be aware of. Low Project Management - Low Business Literacy If your people have low project management and low business literacy you can be assured you wont have much effective innovation going on. People will either be working on the wrong things or by chance working on the right things, but stuffing it up.
In this environment, people will feel uninformed and uninvolved. They will be blaming and complaining and whinging. When first presented with KPI's and other business information they will tell you to ‘nick off.' (or worse)
When asked how to improve the business, people in this environment will come up with ideas like more casual clothes days, radios in the morning tea room or maybe even give me more pay and I'll work harder.
Low Project Management - High Business Literacy In a group with High Business Literacy at least they now know what needs to be done to improve the business performance. They know the KPI's and how they impact on them, they just don't know how to go about systematically improving performance.
Often, projects with great ideas and great intention will be started, but never finished. One of our clients just the other day in an Innovation workshop said ‘we are great at starting projects, just not so good at completing them...'
This tells us where the problem is. Project Management Capability.
High Project Management - Low Business Literacy In this environment you have people running fantastic social functions or charity fundraisers but not making anywhere near the profits or business results they could.
People in this environment are great 'doers of dumb things'. Not to say they are dumb people, but they are making dumb business decisions because they don't truly understand the business.
High Project Management - High Business Literacy This is the high performing organisation.
People at all levels understand the business and understand the business results and how they have an impact on those business results.
When they see a problem or opportunity, they have the skills, the capability and the authority to initiate a project to improve performance.
People in these environments are informed, involved, inspired and innovative.
They run their sections, teams, departments and offices as if they were running their own business.
This is the real secret of innovative organisations.
It's the key to unlocking the creative, innovative power that just sits there in most people waiting to be excited, ignited, activated.
'I dream of.... A Company where people come to work everyday in a rush to try something they woke up thinking about the night before. We want them to go home from work wanting to talk about what they did that day rather than trying to forget it. We want factories where the whistle blows, and everybody wonders where the time went, and then somebody suddenly wonders aloud, why we need a whistle. We want a company where people find a better way, everyday of doing things, and where by shaping their own work experience, they make their lives better and their company the best.' Jack Welch
Let's move into actionNothing happens until the idea moves into action.
What one new idea will you put into action this week?
Break down hierarchy and status? Improve communication and teamwork? Take outsiders ideas into your company? Challenge an old or insane system or practice? Have a celebration or party? Share ideas from across departments - a cross-functional innovation expo? Share an article or report from www.leighfarnell.com with your colleagues to stimulate discussion at your next team meeting?
Innovation is fun. Innovation is how the world moves forward.
Make your world move forward this week.