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Innovation.

It’s a word that gets thrown around in organizations of all types.

Everyone wants to be innovative.  We even have a team in our organization with the word innovation in the team name.

But here’s the deal with innovation – it doesn’t just happen.

Innovative organizations are super-intentional about innovation.  They make innovation a priority and place resources and money behind it.  Innovative organizations understand that true innovation usually results in drastic changes rather than gradual, incremental changes.

Blogger, Jeffrey Phillips, says innovation always begins with one key ingredient.  Check out this quote from a post on his blog, Innovate on Purpose…….

When your firm decides to become more innovative, there’s only one really important criteria for the innovation manager or leader – the willingness, if not the desire, to do things differently.

Be sure to check out his blog if you are interested in a regular, good word on innovation.

I have been in the workforce for almost 10 years now.  So not really a veteran, but also not a rookie.  I have spent time in a number of different roles on many teams in various organizations at 2 large companies.  Each role on each team in each organization at each company was a unique experience, but interestingly there are 6 common attributes that I have found, in varying degrees, in most of my work experiences.

{ 6 Common Attributes } 3 positive attributes & 3 negative attributes.

The 3 positive attributes that I have found in most of my work experiences are…….

1)  Talent, Talent, Talent

I have had the privilege of working with so many talented people.  People with leadership skills, great communicators, star project managers, technology gurus, etc.  A shortage of talent has rarely been an issue in my work experiences.

2)  Effort

In my experience, most people are willing to work hard.  Most people take pride in what they do and they are willing go above and beyond to accomplish great things.  I have also found that people will go out of there way to help their coworkers.

3)  Ideas

Light bulbs are flashing on above people’s heads all the time.  All the innovative and creative ideas needed to transform teams, organizations, and companies are sitting there in the minds of current employees just waiting to be unleashed.  People in the trenches live with organizational frustrations, problems, and inefficiencies daily and they have tons of ideas on how to eliminate them.

The 3 negative attributes that I have found in most of my work experiences are……..

1)  Lack of a Clear, Consistent, Compelling Vision

In some cases, there has been a vision, but it wasn’t clear.  It was confusing and people couldn’t follow a vision they couldn’t understand.  In some cases, there has been a vision, but it wasn’t consistent.  Leaders would cast the vision, and then it would disappear or reappear in a different form.  I recently heard Bill Hybels say, “Vision leaks.”  So true.  People need to be reminded of the vision, consistently.  In some cases, there has been a vision, but it wasn’t compelling.  People like to follow a vision that they can get excited about.  The lack of a clear, consistent, compelling vision means that Talent, Talent, Talent gets wasted, wasted, wasted.

2)  Disorganization

Organizations are not organized.  Documents and files are scattered in various locations.  Project data is not typically documented and maintained properly and made visible to project team members.  Enterprise project management tools that enable task management, resource management, and project collaboration are rarely used.  Knowledge is not shared across the organization.  Time gets wasted on processing email and sitting in meetings because other more efficient forms of communication are ignored.  In disorganized organizations, employee effort is spent going sideways instead of moving forward.

3)  A Status Quo Mentality

In most of my work experiences, a status quo mentality has been strongly embedded into the culture.  I call it the “That’s the way we’ve always done things” syndrome.  Innovative and creative ideas die a quick death in organizations with a status quo mentality.  And worse, employees within a culture like this will eventually stop presenting their ideas out of fear of rejection.  An organization with a status quo mentality will often, unintentionally, kill the very ideas that are needed to transform it.

I’m not saying these 6 common attributes are present in every organization.  Obviously, there are some organizations without one or more of the 3 positive attributes.  For example, a company with a talent shortage.  And clearly, there are some organizations where one or more of the 3 negative attributes are not an issue.  There are many cutting-edge technology companies that definitely do not have a status quo mentality.  But the fact that these 6 common attributes stand out so clearly to me over almost 10 years, makes me think that others must have experienced the same thing to some degree.

Have you experienced something similar in your work experience?  If so, I would love to hear about it.

Have you experienced a work situation with the 3 positive attributes, but without the 3 negative attributes?  I would really love to hear those stories.

Really like this post by Tim Stevens at leadingsmart.com

Tim and the rest of the senior team at Granger Community Church decided that…….

We will not be the team that leads a church so big and flabby that it is impossible to move.

I work for one of the largest companies in the world and I attend one of the largest churches in America, so I understand that being big definitely adds complexity to change and innovation.

However, being big is never a valid excuse for avoiding necessary change and innovation.

Still working my way through Mavericks at Work by William C. Taylor & Polly Labarre

Here are a few of the lines that are now highlighted in my copy of the book….

• If everybody is selling the same thing, what’s the tie-breaker? It’s purpose.

• How you talk about your company speaks volumes about how you think about your business. And ultimately, how you think about your business determines how well it performs.

• If you do things the way everybody else does, why do you think you’re going to do any better?

• Companies that compete on a disruptive point of view are defined as much by the opportunities they choose not to pursue as by the businesses they do enter.

• Stop pussfooting around with “softball” issues such as corporate governance and stakeholder management and focus on what matters most in business – using every legitimate resource and strategy available to gain advantage over competitors.

• Even in the face of massive competition, don’t think about the competition……..Just think about the customer.

• At the heart of every great company is a clear sense of purpose.

• We believe that a new wave of strategic innovation is being built around disruptive points of view.

• The companies that get in trouble are the ones that are mushy about who they are.

• The open-source movement clearly demonstrates that the more smart people you can persuade to work on a problem, the more likely it is to get solved.

• You cannot motivate the best people with money. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. People do their best work when they are passionately engaged in what they’re doing.

• Companies that successfully attract outside brainpower will absolutely eat the lunch of companies that don’t.

• It’s amazing to think there are people inside big companies spending millions of dollars to rediscover knowledge that already exists.

• You can think big without having to think of everything yourself.

• Whatever day it is, something in the world changed overnight, and you better figure out what it is and what it means. You have to forget what you just did and what you just learned. You have to walk in stupid every day.

The speaker for session 2 at today’s Innovative Impact conference was Kirby Jon Caldwell.

I was blown away. He is a brilliant communicator.

Here are a few notes from his speech on innovation……

• He is energized by this concept of innovation.
• One reason churches are dying is because they fail to innovate.
• Love meets needs. Innovation meets needs.
• We should be people of ‘holy’ innovation.
• Before innovation occurs it looks impossible, after it occurs it looks like it was inevitable.
• Before innovation is birthed it looks obscure, after it is birthed it looks obvious…….but if you are not careful it become obsolete.
• Innovation is an act of faithfulness.
• God was in the heavens -> God was in the hills -> God was in the temple -> then the innovation of all innovations….Jesus Christ.
• His wife told him he was a workaholic. She said “You have a vision for the state, you have a vision for this city, you have a vision for your church…..What is your vision for this house?”
• If you do not innovate, you die.
• 8 Innovations Killers (for some reason i only jotted down 6)
  1. abundance of personel & resources can stifle innovation
  2. lack of committment by management
  3. poor communication
  4. inadequate information technology
  5. unwillingness or inability to interact with your customers
  6. internal politics & gamesmenship
• People Run to This Model…
  • Vision – where are we going?
  • Mission – why do we exist?
  • Action Steps (sometimes these like to go off on their own…make sure they always stay in line behind Vision & Mission)
  • Structure & Systems
  • People (on a bad day, your biggest liability…..on a good day, your biggest asset)