Paul R. Williams, CEO of Think for A Change, LLC, and author of The Innovation Manager's Desktop Reference, and one of the Top 10 Innovation Experts To Whom You Should Be Listening joined the show last week. You can listen to our conversation here.
We talked about his book, its solutions, the 1500 pages of notes and resources tools and tips Paul compiled into this great desktop tool for innovation managers. And we carved out some tips for those facing the challenge of innovation and creating a repeatable reliable process for innovation within their organization.
Paul, thank you for being on the show. How are you? I don’t encourage stalking but I know you’re up to something amazing. Where are you? What are you doing?
Half of me is waiting for the football season to start and the other half is hoping the snow has stopped for the next 6 months.Let’s talk about your book. Again the title is The Innovation Manager’s Desk Reference. In writing this book, what gap in the innovation library were you trying to fill?
As an innovation manager practitioner, there’s just an absence of tools and tips for corralling the effort of managing innovation. There are a ton of books out there on leadership innovation, innovation management, innovation styles and tips and techniques and ideas about how to be a creative individual. But there wasn’t a book out there that looks at the entire life cycle and what it means to manage that entire process of what it means to be an innovation manager.
I’ve collected a ton of books and resources. I have 1500 pages of these tools, tips and resources. I needed place to store them so I created a book.
My friend Erika Andersen coined a phrase I love. That term is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future from writing The Innovation Manager’s Desktop Reference.
The thing that continually frustrates me and frustrates a lot of people involved in being an innovation manager is it’s considered as some kookie, weird cheerleading approach.
But it is a true business discipline designed for growth. And should be treated as such like all the other business disciplines like marketing, IT, Finance. It delivers real tangible business results.
Corporate and executive leadership should look at this more than a one time event.
How will you know when you reach it or approach it, that you’re bringing your message to the masses?
I think it’s getting closer. When we see that innovation is considered a core competency. That’s when I’m going to see it when people are finally taking it serious. It’s not something you try when things get tough or dump when things get good. That’s when we’ll see it ‘s become embedded in a company as a core competency.
Given a choice between investing in advertising agency and making innovation a core competency which one will generate the best ROI?
To me you don’t have a product to advertise without an innovation. If you stick that money into a short term, an ad program today that’s great it keeps you in business today. If you don’t place bets on something that is good for tomorrow your business will be short lived.
Why do so many companies overlook this?
They get stuck in what’s facing them today. We have this very short-term mentality. It’s hard not to rest on your laurels.
Unless you invest in the next big thing or that new incremental improvement and have at least part of your vision on growth. Force yourself to discover new things, products and consider a new business model.
Bruce Springsteen, one of my favorite artists, says he sings each concert for one person in the crowd. Describe the reader you had in mind as you wrote The Innovation Manager's Desktop Reference.
There’s a lot of people out there, those brave souls who come up with a great idea and their CEO says yes that’s a great idea and now you’re in charge of innovation. I wanted them to know they are not alone out there. There are tools and best practices out there. There’s a place to turn to for help and this book gives them some of those tools and best practices to help them.
Why does that reader come to mind? Why do they need your book?
As the Recession started to hit I started to see people on twitter and my blog saying I’ve been made head of our innovation, our R&D’s been gutted, what do I do? And they weren’t schooled in new product development and they were asking me for help or tips or tools to manage this process. They started coming out of the woodwork and I felt compelled to help them.
You list a history of creative problem solving models from DaVinci to yourself. Besides yourself and Mr. DaVinci which model was most intriguing for you? Why?
I make no secret that I’m a true Disney zealot and one of the most compelling models I came across was one that was used by Walt Disney. And that’s the Dreamer-realist-Critic model.
And what he would do is first realize the need to be a dreamer and they called it blue-sky dreaming. And they would let their imaginations run wild, go free. And once that was over he’d put his realist hat on and ask if they can build it and will people want to see it on the screen. And then he’d put his critic hat on and see if he could find anything wrong.
This last step set him apart to see if he could find a way to improve it.
What did you learn from it? How does yours differ and why’s that important?
Mine is individually stepped down. My model walks people through on how to find ideas, define the problem that needs to be solved and make sure you’re not solving the wrong ideas or features of the problem , then it will move more towards idea generation, idea selection through prototyping and then to market. It’s a little bit more product specific.
One of the things that is harder for me is that critic step. Quite honestly, most great ideas are mashups of other great ideas. I’ve tried to build that into my model that makes you circle back and make sure that you capture all ideas and build on those ideas.
What are the four beliefs of a successful innovator?
Every successful innovator needs to have:
- Courage to standalone and do something
- Perseverance. You have to be able to stay committed.
- Trust. A good ability to trust. You need to be able to trust people with your ideas. You need to build a group of people you can trust.
- Faith. If you really believe in it you have to believe that someday people will find it valuable.
I think you need to have pieces of all four.
Most importantly you really need to have the perseverance. Be willing to take it, right as you’re willing to quit, give it one more try. Stories abound about people who gave it one more try and that was what was needed.
As a nation, which one are we strongest and weakest at? What’s their impact?Perseverance is ingrained in our nature, our national core. We really do pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
I’d say we really are weakest at trust. We’re not a real trusting culture.
What happens is that ideas are not exchanged a freely as possible. Some people will hold on to ideas...unless you have all those ideas that get mashed together I don’t think you get to the right result.
That leads us to this economy.
All you’re trying to do is protect your existing model, protecting what you already have, trying to make the next quarter so the stock analyst don’t hammer you.
You write about the need for incubation. What is incubation? How does a company provide time for it?
What I try to explain to them is that even 3M and Google those organizations don’t just say every Friday I’m going to let you do what you want to do.
Incubation is really about letting the mind do what it does best. And that’s solves problems. Ideas take unique combinations of your experiences. You need to be patient and ready for when those ideas come up. That’s what I call the quiet time that’s built into every day.
If there is a way you can create some time, if you can allow your people to not be over-scheduled and take that time, allow things to percolate, give their employee that freedom to NOT be punished for doing that.
You list 20 idea stimulating activities. Number 20 is shoveling snow. I disagree.
Honestly I do too. It’s my least favorite on the list. I just figured if you had to do be out there...
Which is your favorite?
I have a couple of new ones.
- Fishing: For me fishing is a great time to get out, in the middle of the lake, there’s nothing else going on.
- Old-Time Radio Shows: I’ve discovered old-time radio shows out on the internet. I listen to a show and it just pops my imagination.
It dumbs everything down to what you can fit on one slide. It takes away story-telling and becomes more a fact regurgitation.
There’s more work putting the slide-deck together than conveying the message.
Let’s talk about your 100-day plan. The first 25 days are tough. You have to break down silos, find people willing to risk their careers and privileges with pursuing a new idea, not to mention reviewing failures. Any one of these usually prove to be deal-killers in most organizations. Is this the ‘get the worst part out of the way’ approach and it’s all easy riding from there?
Yes. Take all the ugly work out at the very beginning.
There are 4 things I consider very critical:
- Senior management buy-in
- Treating Innovation as a true business discipline
- Show me the resources.
- Build a good repeatable reliable process
If you have those 4 things you are very far ahead of the game.
The toughest part of those 25 days are the silos. Some of these silos are so entrenched they spend all their time defending themselves against the other areas of the company and not serving the company's customers.
There are people in that company that want to innovate, share ideas, stick their neck out. They understand the only way to survive is to get better at growing.
They come out of the wood work and I’m constantly surprised and refreshing to see strong introverted people who hammer away at the computer and they become strong extroverts.
You need to walk the talk, show them it’s not the flavor of the month, it’s not going away then the 100 day plan becomes feasible.
Let’s talk about silo mentality and corner-office mindsets. What are three tips an innovation manager needs to address these innovation killers?
A lot of organizations are built around department budgets. One of the things I typically do is setup a project based budget so there are project resources and they are growth oriented.
The 2nd thing is to establish innovation performance metrics. You can set up behaviors to pretty quickly break down those silos.
Set up an innovation center that provides coaching support, resources, coaching. There’s the central area where coaching and support can be given. There are people you can go to help make this process easier than you think.
What’s your favorite line that innovation killers use? What’s a good retort to kill that killer?
My personal favorite is Oh we’ll never get the budget, we’ll never get the money.
My reply is Well, I’ll do it for free, with no budget, on my own time.
There is a lot you can do with no money. And your willingness to invest your time, take the risk yourself, sets you apart.
You’re a big fan in your book of just do it, start today, do something today. I love it. It always brought a smile to my face when I read it. But doing something today is a huge risk in most companies. How can an employee, any employee, mitigate that risk and do something today. What are three things they can do to do it today?Yeah, it is risky to stick your neck out, to move away from what’s considered your bread and butter.
I think if a person really understand the problems an organization faces and starts with those, they’ll be applauded for just those. Identifying a key opportunity. Just trying to understand what those are, sets you apart from Joe- Lunchbox who comes in and puts their 8 hours a day and goes home.
Secondly start small and prove your idea one step at a time. The risk is really spread out.
If you share your ideas at the very top of the organization rather than in the middle. Have the courage to communicate directly with your organization’s leaders. They’re people just doing their work. Their job is to focus on the strategy of the company. They really want to know about how to make their business better.
These are are some ways to minimize the risk and take that first step and leapfrog some of the risks.
John Hagel, the author of The Power of Pull: How small moves, smartly made, can set big things in motion was on the show recently. He blogged an amazing statistic his research uncovered. ROA, return on assets, has declined by over 75% since 1965. Does that sound like our abilities, our appetites, for innovation have declined by over 75% since 1965.
I think what we really need is a new business model to leverage this new business reality that we’re not an industrial economy but an idea economy.
What do we do about that, to further accelerate the transition to embrace newer business models?
We’re moving away from a command & control and piecemeal type factoryish approach to work and towards a more open management style that’s conducive to more frequent idea sharing.
Coinciding with that there’s going to be a huge shift in how we manage this. It’s not going to matter when you’re working or where you’re working. You’re seeing the shift and some acceptance of the business model.
Let’s role play for a minute. I’m your CFO and ...you’re the CEO. I just reported we’re an average company and our Return on Assets has dropped over the past 4-5 years. What would be your next three decisions?
My overarching them would be to get everybody in the organization to walk the talk and figure out a way to grow. Come up with some new ideas. Let’s sit down, identify our problems and generate some ideas around these ideas and communicate this is not a onetime thing. Focus on unmet customer’s needs. Find the new things to make their lives easier, better.
The second thing would be eliminate the non-productive assets. Don’t be afraid to drop the money-loser projects.
On a national level, you’re sitting in the White House and the Council of Economic Advisors reports this statistic for the nation. And President Obama turns to you and says Paul...what do you think? What are three steps the nation can take right now to reverse this trend or accelerate the embrace of sharing ideas.
Start changing our educational system We’re still teaching our kids rote memorization skills. We’re producing factory workers for an economy that no longer has factories. Start there, plant a seed for the future.
Invest more in entrepreneurs. At least get out of their way.
Third, we miss nowadays, our national BHAG, big hairy audacious goal. Until we find something we all can get behind and crank up the ingenuity of the nation we’ll struggle.
Now...speaking broadly hasn’t our education system and the common top-down command and control organization structure killed that ability or certainly pushed it down?
We need to find a nice happy medium between teaching basics we need them to know. but beyond that we’re failing them in building that imagination they are born with.
What about social media? What role does it play with innovation in a corporate setting? I see social media’s use as an indicator like a canary in a mine. If it’s used, it’s likely that organization is able to innovate. If not, they’re not ready. What do you think?
Social media is one of many tools. It is a tool of ever-growing importance. It enlarges the funnel of ideas. It makes it as big as the world. It gets more ideas to collide faster.
Trusting your idea and throwing it out there. That’s what social media is all about. You can exchange those thoughts and ideas in real-time.
Now, you list a number of great books to read on innovation. What were the three most influential books from that list?
- Innovation to the Core - Raw innovation how-to
- Thinker Toys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques - Improving your personal creativity
- Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation - Nitty-gritty financial details. Great book on how to compute the ROI for an innovation project.
- How to be like Walt - for pure unadulterated inspiration.
And predictions for the Packers?
Well. I hope we’ll be another 11-5 team and we'll beat the Vikings once if Brett Favre comes back.
Where can people find you?
Next Week’s Guest:
Thomas Koulopoulos, founder and CEO of the Delphi Institute one of, if not THE, world's leading advisor on innovation for the past 20 years. He is the author 8 books. And his latest The Innovation Zone: How Great Companies Re-Innovate for Amazing Success looks at how companies are building cultures of innovation. 9:30 AM, Central, Wednesday May 19, 2010
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