Are you generating the best ideas?
I smile every time I use my iPhone – and I’m smiling as I write this on one now. Partly because it’s so simple and intuitive to use for a technical dinosaur like me. But mainly because it represents the victory of a whole company focusing on what’s important to its future – over a mass of well intentioned but commercially useless ideas.
You see, the challenge that many organisations face is not one of producing innovative ideas – people love to be creative in different aspects of their job. I’m sure we’ve all had experience of generating lists of imaginative ideas to improve process X or innovate customer journey Y. Indeed, we’re told again and again over the years that ‘no idea is a bad idea’.
Producing innovative business ideas
That’s true, but only to an extent. Producing a huge number of ideas is a critical part of any process of innovation. But only one part. Another key part is to set clear goals when asking employees to innovate, to focus them on what’s really important to the business – rather than what’s in front of them. My research scientist father was always critical of the University he worked at exhorting his department to achieve a certain number of discoveries each year – only to witness his colleagues complete that instruction by mid-January before getting onto the longer term and more testing Crazy goal of a Nobel Prize.
Management Tip of the Day
So I was interested to see today’s HBR Management Tip Of The Day confirm my experience. Not only does it recommend directing innovation to problems that are relevant to the business – what’s really important – but clearly explaining the outcome you’re looking for. To borrow from George Orwell, ‘all ideas are equal, but some ideas are more equal than others’.
So what’s to be done to get productive innovation if you’re running a team, a division, an organisation – or just wanting to make your own boat go faster?
One, remind yourself and your team of your Crazy goal. (We’ve been taught by a client to help understand a Crazy goal by the words “wouldn’t it be amazing if…” but that’s another story). Explore what you mean by it and what it looks like in hard commercial terms. “To create customers for life” is one of our client’s Crazy goals. How would you ensure that your colleagues fully understood this goal, why it’s important to the business and why it requires a new way of thinking and acting by everyone?
Making your Crazy goal boat go faster
Two, focus on generating, testing and executing the best ideas that make the Crazy goal boat go faster. That’s not the wildest ideas. Or even the most creative ideas. But ideas that will bring the results that matter to the direction and ambitions of the business – and ones that build momentum for repeat performances when achieved.
And lastly, work this through as a team in order to achieve your goals. Innovation delegated to a group in a corner office might produce a tight knit plan – but it’ll also induce a shrug of the shoulders from everyone else who reckon that there’s ‘no need now those guys have got it sorted’.
