Innovation, is it really so important?

Last Friday , at the Solvay annual MBA gala in Brussels I was asked what the word innovation meant to me. Instead of giving an answer there and then, I asked for some time to consider the question, after all it was late and topics such as this are not the lightest to handle after a couple of glasses of wine.

I remember reading, just the other week, that ‘all companies need to innovate themselves out of the recession’ and I wondered what the world would be like if they could? If the solution could ever be that simple and if innovation were to be treated like a commodity, why didn’t we simply bring in the professional innovators? After all, it is all too easy to criticize and yet so difficult to propose a solution or an original idea.

With whole websites geared over to innovation (such as: www.innovationtools.com) and people speaking about innovation as if they had invented it for themselves, it got me wondering…

Firstly I want to share with you, the Chambers’ dictionary definition of innovation, just so that we cannot have any misunderstandings:
I quote: ‘Innovate: v.t. to renew, alter: to introduce something as new… a novelty, the substitution of one obligation for another.’ So this definition does not help us much. Wikkipedia tells us: ‘The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.’ – Now that’s more like it!

It is important, however, that we do not get carried away with the second definition and confuse invention and innovation. To 'invent' almost implies creating something out of nothing, as in research and development. Whereas, in the truest sense of the word, 'innovation' is more about using the crux of something that already exists but in a new and different way. And this, to me, defines innovation as possibly the most important tool (or concept) for gaining increased efficiency and new hope into tired businesses and projects.

So 'yes' is the answer to my question, without doubt. Innovation is absolutely essential for taking something that is broken and putting it to good use, maybe even for something that it was never originally intended for. If you link this concept to personnel, it is not a giant leap to imagine that for people that are de-motivated; that possibly worry if they will still have a job at Christmas, or feel that the skills they have are no longer suited to what society is needing right now, you do not need to have a Phd to realize that it is innovation that they need to re-invent belief and their own self net worth. To be truly innovative we need to be open minded, confident, daring and certainly not risk averse.

So when you see people taking on responsibility, even for what might seem as a daft idea, and when you hear people say “What the heck, it’s worth a try, what have we got to loose?” Then you know that hope has infiltrated its way into your project or business. And as long as you do not dampen out the creative flames with bureaucracy and sarcasm, then you stand a good chance of survival. Because first ideas are often crazy, but soon people gather round to watch the madness and in doing so offer help and make suggestions with the frequent result that is often both surprising and profitable. What’s more, it was ‘their’ idea and not yours and ‘they’ will work and work in order to show you that they have a worth, a vision, an idea, a possible way forward.

(To misquote Tennyson’s in memoriam) it is better to have tried and fail, than never to have tried at all.
Wishing you an innovative week,

Harley

When is your project ready for go-live?

‘You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows’, but give the same source data to a number of different weather forecasters and nine days out of ten – you’ll end up with differing predictions (unless, perhaps, you’re living in the Sahara).
Assuming the above is true, then how can we rationally and safely know when a complex project is ready for go-live, especially if the decision to go or not to go, can have a major impact upon the business? As my MBA students know, at the beginning of any project I ask myself three questions:
1. What is the problem we are solving?
2. How will we know when it is solved?
3. How will we measure it?
This is basically a dramatic over simplification of a business case – but they are the three questions that are most overlooked. Hence, early on, I build a slide deck that I will use at the very end of the project at go-live decision making time and again at the end of the evaluation phase.
The answer to the question is that the PM should not make a decision because he, or she, alone does not know exactly when to go live. Instead he guides his Project Board into making a unanimous decision, based upon very specific sign off criteria.
The format of the decision making process should be displayed in a slide deck with one or two slides per measuring point, with a summary slide that covers the whole topic at the end or beginning. An important part of this exercise is that the sign off criteria has to be formulated and agreed way in advance by each member of the Project Board, based upon specialist advice from the experts below each and every one of them.
No one member of the project board is exempt from taking on the ownership of ensuring the well being of the business. This has nothing to do with apportioning blame but everything to do with collective responsibility, involvement and personal commitment.
So when is your project ready for go-live? What criteria do you use – it’s worth thinking about, long before your next crunch time comes!
Have a good week,

Harley

Planning ahead – what’s the point? It’s provisioning that we need

Every professional project manager knows that the secret to a successful project lies, for a very large part, in good planning. And I for one would say nothing to suggest otherwise. However, there’s a very poignant Jewish joke that sometimes returns to haunt me. Question: “How do you make God laugh?” Answer: “You tell him your plans”.

This is not the kind of joke that has you rolling over with laughter but a kind of double action joke that affects you on multiple levels. On the one hand the idea of God being able to see your future and that he cruelly takes pleasure in being able to laugh out loud as to how wrong you are. And on the other hand, on a more cynical level, where you yourself can look back and laugh (or cry) at the vision you once had and how it has turned out so differently.

I guess there maybe some people (purely based upon the law of averages) that for them, everything goes to plan? But for the most of us, this is clearly not the case. This does not however mean that things necessarily turn out for the worse – quite the contrary. Even in our biggest tragedies comes new hope, new ideas, and even new life.

The point I am making is this: Both in our business and in our personal life, there is no point in making very detailed, long term plans for the future. If you have ambition and you know what you want you should set out a strategy, not a plan, to best try and reach it. I suggest the following:
1. Understand very clearly where you are right now
2. Work hard on developing a clear and plausible vision as to where you want to be
3. Formulate a very clear strategy
4. Ensure you maintain discipline and follow rigorously your short term planning
5. Make provisions for the future

Every adventurer knows that they need a plan, but every adventurer quickly realizes that plans need to be constantly adjusted and revised in order to keep the long term vision in sight. But more important than plans are provisions. We need just enough provisions to keep us going through the rough times but not too much that they weigh us down or make us lazy. And this is the delicate balance that most businesses are facing right now.

So when planning for the future, think in terms of strategy and not detailed plans. And when you have plans, be prepared to change them for the sake of the long term vision. However, the one thing you should never compromise on is ensuring that you have sufficient provisions for yourself and those that depend upon you. Only a fool risks their own life, let alone, the lives of others by setting off with insufficient provisions to reach their next base.

Have a good week,

H.

Who needs Optimists?

I am not sure which is worse, being surrounded by optimists or by pessimists? Both types are enough to drive me nuts.

HR recruiters are always looking for optimistic candidates – self starters with big ideas and imagination – all sounds great, but…

Too many people confuse the word optimism with enthusiasm. I used to be an optimist, but over the years I a find myself becoming more and more of a realist. Sure, I believe I can do almost anything in my head, but I have learned from experience to separate dreaming from the reality of being awake.

Optimists are very often lazy. They tend to think that somehow, simply by being optimistic, things will get done. Enthusiastic people, on the other hand, enjoy a challenge. They think about the hard work ahead of them, but it does not frighten them. They are not afraid of pain. The mountain they are facing is a massive challenge waiting to be concurred. For an optimist, the mountain is nothing more than a hill and almost anyone could climb it, if they really wanted to.

Perhaps the solution is to ask HR to recruit enthusiastic people only? Or is it? What blend of people types do we need to form the perfect change project team?

Assuming a project team of 10 is needed, I suggest the following blend:

1 x visionary with a deep knowledge of the environment
1 x optimist with charismatic leadership and an ego that can adopt someone else’s vision
5 x enthusiasts , each with the necessary key skills to do the task (preferably with at least one or two with a good, balanced, sense of humor)
2 x pragmatic realists (planners and performance analysts)
And finally:
1 x pessimist to highlight each and every hazard and thus to become the one person for everyone to get pissed at, thereby uniting the entire group, whilst keeping them from danger!

Enjoy your week!

An existential approach to process optimization

This week I had a meeting with a client that, for a moment, took me back to my college days and the intense, alcohol induced philosophical debates my fellow students and I used to get drawn into. The debates often involved trees in forests, fish, bread and bicycles etc. Jean Paul Satre’s ‘The Age of Reason’ and Immanuel Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ both came flooding back.

I was in a meeting with a senior manager whose team had the responsibility for designing KPI’s for measuring the effectiveness of business processes. At one point I ignorantly suggested that to design an efficient process it is best to separate technology from the process itself. I suggested that no matter whether we are in SAP, Cognos, BO, or any other system for processing and/or reporting, we simply need to get back to the essence of the transaction itself. It was at that precise moment that my client interrupted me by saying:

“Harley, I have been studying this exact theory for the last 13 years and no matter how I approach it, I realize that what you are saying is impossible. Try imagining even the simplest of processes without the use of tools. For example, imagine how to design the process of getting from your home to your office without any tools or technology – you can not, it’s just not possible. So we are obliged to accept that tools are an intrinsic part of the process its self, there is no other way of approaching it”.

I considered what he said for a while then told him a true story:

I was once working in China, my client was in the closing stages of building a giant chemical production plant which was situated two and a half kilometers away from the regional head office. The problem was that twice per day a massive amount of data needed to be transferred between the plant’s production systems and the servers located in the regional head office. By coincidence, I had joined a technical meeting addressing the problem, at the point where everyone present had seemingly exhausted all the options. I was told that: ‘Laying a dedicated cable meant tunneling under our competitors factory. Going around it was way too expensive and the cable would then be subject to damage from road building schemes and other forms of maintenance. Using satellite or 3G technology would be too unreliable and would cost the earth.’

The participants were close to panicking – the new plant had cost millions of dollars and was only a few weeks from going on line. It was then I noticed a Chinese construction worker cycling past on his bicycle – “Why can’t you do it manually”? , I asked. “Why not simply download the data onto an external hard drive and have someone cycle with it to office”? The room fell silent. “Are you kidding?” someone asked. “No, I am deadly serious! Give me one good reason as to why it might not work? Give me a simpler, better idea if you have one. If you are worried about risk, download the data onto two hard drives and have two cyclists, one in reserve – just in case”.

As far as I know, to this day the bicycle method is still being used!

Of course – this process, just like any other, uses a tool so my client is correct – but it is not the kind of tool that technologist naturally consider – why? Because, it’s too simple, too embarrassing to admit to one’s colleagues. Me, I don’t care. I am not an engineer. I am just a pragmatic manager that dislikes endless discussions and simply likes to get on with the job in hand. (Except when I have had a few too many units of alcohol and I am in the presence similarly intoxicated philosophers)…

Mitigation Strategy or Contingency plan what difference does it make?

Some of our profession spend a great deal of effort making contingency plans that cover just about every conceivable scenario. In fact in some cases I have noticed it as an obsession. The first tell tale signs are a seemingly never ending barrage of “but what if?” questions. Admittedly, sometimes it can be difficult to know exactly where to draw the line.

I like to make a simple matrix, high chance/ high impact to low chance / low impact and then to focus on the areas that demand the most attention. The important point of the exercise is to make sure that you rely on the input of a wide group of people. I recommend short brainstorming sessions, beginning with everyone writing down their top ten major concerns on a piece of paper and then followed by a comparative discussion until you have enough input to build the matrix and to construct a well thought through contingency plan.

However with the recent outbreak of Swine Flu it is not always easy to recognize the logic. It is hard to work out what is hysteria and what is ‘reasonable concern’. Apparently this week the guests of the Metro Park hotel in Hong Kong were quarantined in their hotel because a few days earlier the hotel received a visitor from Mexico that had subsequently fallen ill.

The British government has been printing leaflets to be delivered into every letterbox in the land, sharing pearls of wisdom such as(and I quote):

When you cough or sneeze it is especially important to follow the rules of good hygiene to prevent the spread of germs:
• Always carry tissues.
• Use clean tissues to cover your mouth and nose when you cough and sneeze.
• Bin the tissues after one use.
• Wash your hands with soap and hot water or a sanitiser gel often.

But the one I liked best was on the BBC website:
• If you have flu symptoms and recently visited affected areas of Mexico, seek medical advice

Some people use the term ‘mitigation strategy’ while others call it a contingency plan – to be honest I don’t know the difference. What I do know is that the guests of the Metro Park have plenty of time to debate the subject, once they have completed the filling in their travel insurance forms, in the vain hope of receiving some kind of compensation.

I have always wanted to visit Hong Kong. I have flown over it a few times but never had the time to land. I am just imagining what it must be like to have finally arrived in your hotel, only to be told that you can not leave it until your holiday is over!

One last piece of great advice from the Kaikora District Council and the University of Otago, New Zealand:
‘if you have to go out in public keep at least one metre away from other people and avoid making physical contact.’

H.

Who are the best decision makers in the world?

For those of you that are familiar with my nine step approach to complex problem solving will know just how seriously I take the subject of decision making, in fact I devote a whole step to it. I place a lot of emphasis on deciding up front how the decision will be made and who exactly should take it. Depending upon the type of decision and its urgency I put forward various possibilities of approach. But this week I learned a new much simpler way and it has got me thinking as to how I could make it work within my client’s organization structures.

Imagine this. Imagine that you are looking to rent an apartment, obviously you will map some specific criteria: location (convenience and safety), price per month, number of bedrooms, oil fired or gas central heating and so on. Once you have your criteria and have viewed a few choices that fit, you then begin the difficult phase of weighing up one option against the other. This process is not so difficult if you are the only person going to live in the apartment, but imagine you were looking for a head office location for a multi-national company with desk space for 2000 administrators. What if I told you there is another way, an easier and more efficient way?

This week Dr. Elva Robinson of Bristol University offered a valid alternative to our clumsy decision making processes. She deducts from her observations that you simply need to elect a scout to go out and find a location and not to bother to compare alternatives at all.

Basically the idea is that you simply look until you find a location that meets all your criteria and move in! But that’s impossible I hear you say, and indeed it probably is for humans, but ants do this all the time. By gluing radio transmitters to the backs of 2000 rock ants Dr. Elva’s students discovered that ants appoint ‘estate agents’ that go out and look for a new nest when the old one gets close to becoming unfit for purpose. The ant agents have the full approval of the colony, they have very specific criteria and when they find something suitable the whole colony moves in and gets on with the required building and alterations. No debates, no board meetings, contracts or lawyers, just simple delegation and logical decision making.

In fact us humans are pretty bad at decision taking. If we are given multiple alternatives we may begin by approaching the topic logically, but more often than not, at the last minute we mess everything up by taking a completely irrational decision based upon instinct or a seemingly completely irrelevant criteria point, always trying to justify it to ourselves afterwards, especially if it turns out to be a bad one.

Now, if you are thinking that an ant colony is a much more straightforward structure than a business, you should look a little closer. It certainly is much more efficient and effective. I think us humans can learn a thing or two about delegation and decision making from Dr. Robinson and her study on ants. After all, she reminds us that there are probably more ants in the world than humans – that has to be some measure of success? After we have screwed up the environment so much that we become extinct, I wouldn’t mind supposing that Rock ants will still be around taking the right decisions for their long term well being and safety.

Now it’s back to advising my clients and guiding them into bringing in the right criteria and methodology to ensure they take the right decisions. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it!

Have a good week,
Harley