Kathy Harris

I heard a news story this morning about a criminal and the large number of charges being pressed against him. The prosecutors are throwing the book at him in hopes that something will stick. 

It occurs to me that some organizations run their projects and new initiatives this way. When something new is funded, the leaders, sponsors and owners throw the book at it. They toss all their possible requirements — good, bad, simple, complex, whatever — into the mix. These actions load up an initiative to the breaking point. It is complex to produce and test, difficult to integrate and implement, and often, change management simply fails because there is too much of the old to undo and too much of the new to easily consume.   

Innovation leaders often throw the book at their initiatives. They read everything they can find (and there is a lot). When they implement ideation, they want to try every approach at the outset – events, suggestion boxes, crowdsourcing and incubators. And, they avoid focusing innovation on a specific challenge for fear of missing or stifling any ideas. 

When just starting out, I suggest “throwing the Cliff’s Notes book” at innovation. Start with a narrow approach and add in new pieces as you make progress and learn to manage innovation. And this goes for using our Gartner research too. We publish a lot of research – just this year, we created an updated Innovation Primer to cover all the key processes and decisions for an innovation program – this is a small book of about 28 pages if printed it on 8 ½ x 11 paper. Then, we also produced a Metrics Workbook at 15 pages. So, if you try everything in both these research documents, you’ll overwhelm the initiative, yourself and others. 

So, here are a few thoughts on improving your success rates:

• Reading about other companies and their innovation programs is a great idea – case studies and stories help you discover the subtleties of how others overcome the challenges of innovation. As you read, identify a few companies that appear compatible with your aspirations for innovation. Create a short watch list (no more than 10-15 organizations) to track and focus on. This will improve your own time management and deepen your understanding of innovation. And, other people will not tire of listening to yet another story about yet another company – simplification will help them and your credibility too.
• When using Gartner research or other methodologies, use it as a workbook. Scan the material first to get a sense of what you have. Then, create your high level plan and identify the decisions you have to make. Rely on deeper reading and the details in your workbooks to help build out and execute your plan.
• Set realistic goals about your first implementation of an innovation program. Test drive your introduction from the perspective of your participants – if you can’t tell the story of you program in a few slides or a five minute spiel, then it may be too complex for others to consume. So, start simply and expand the program with rapid additions (as fast as your best participants can consume the change). Make it stick!!