The Innovation Mentor

Like many of us emabracing social media forums such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter we try and find that fine line between involvment which adds value and being overwhelmed. Of these forums, I think that Twitter is one of the most interesting.

Twitter is like a global stream of concious snippets. You give your thoughts (or tweets) to the world and essentially have access to everyone elses.

Jennifer Liston, in her blog article 'Blogs, Facebook and Twitter: the new e-pulpits?', gives an interesting perspective on a new breed of evangelists and their prolific tweets of wisdom.

What do you think when you read one of their 140 character tweets of wisdom: the sweet tweet of birdsong or misplaced cackle?!

In his article 'Reasonable approach to risk management', Zern Liew draws our attention to the issue of managing business risk from a governance perspective. He asks the question; what does doing a good job at risk management actually mean?

In my opinion, if a business only ever managed risk with respect to governance it puts its future existence at risk. Now that's risky!

Risky Business

Doing business is risky, commercial relationships are risky, developing new products and services is risky, suppliers are risky, supply channels are risky. In other words risk is an intrinsic aspect of our business environment. How such risks are managed comes down to such things as culture , values, personalities and style. In some cases business have a well defined protocol and procedures for managing risk but these are in the minority and usually associated will businesses who deal in risk as a commodity. Is it any wonder that risk management is such a grey topic.

A Past Risk Experience

I have one experience where I watched the managing director of a company ‘risk manage’ a once creative, innovative company into a timid, reactionary former shell of itself. By all observed accounts this manager was fiscally diligent, managed corporate governance issues without fault and would probably make the claim that they had done everything reasonable that can be expected to protect the business. To this manager a ‘risk’ was something to be avoided rather than managed. Risks were seen as the things which could go wrong with the ’status-quo’ and these were indeed managed well. Innovation was seen as simply too risky.

Innovation, Risk and Reward

Innovation and risk go hand in hand. A new idea which flies in the face of convention carries a risk so great that any responsible manager would drop it like a hot potato. These ideas begin their lives as huge uphill battles with individuals being willing to risk their reputations, careers, businesses or fortune. These very same ideas have brought us such life changing products as convenience foods, air travel and personal computers. Even a modest new product development program is risky to a business in terms of cash, time and resources.

There are plenty of very good articles about managing risk and reward. Some of the best are written aimed at the trading industry where risks are a necessary part of the process. Innovation should be treated just the same, as a risk taken for a potential reward. Like trading, the certainty does not come from picking the right company, backing the right horse or coming up with that killer innovation, but rather comes from being consistent at taking well considered risks. The risks in developing innovative new products, risks in creating new business relationships, risks in exploring new supply chain models are the kinds or risk businesses actually need. Avoiding these risks is truly risky business.

My Take

I believe that good risk management will not only look at the negative consequences of not being prepared for something which might happen (traditional risk management) but also the rewards to be gained by actively taking risks. By managing negative consequence risk diligently and sensibly taking on the high reward risks, a business manager can confidently say that they are doing everything possible to protect their business.


Robert Rath - http://innovation-mentor.com

A recurring theme in conversations with successful individuals is some defining moment, an 'aha' moment often prompted by a saying or a quote. Suddenly veils and obstructions vanish and what needs to be done becomes clear to achieve your gaols.

Jennifer Liston in her post 'Revelationary Statements', shares one of those moments. Read about Jennifer's 'Aha' moment at http://www.wordsworx.com and share your own experience.

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

I am a strong proponent of using systems to plan and manage process. This is not because I am a control person; it's simply because without these systems, I would not be able to cope with the complexity of the work I do. In the design and manufacturing world, one small error in a line of source code or one missed letter in a supplier's order code on a bill of materials containing hundreds of entires can (and often does) translate into a very expensive recovery exercise.

For this reason, managing communications with clients is vital to a successful project.

Using A Communication System

When I begin working with a new client, the first thing I do is to put a layer of management around our communication. As I have discussed in a previous post, I am particularly wary of email. This wariness is especially true where a team is involved. I create an on-line collaborative project team space which any team member can interact with using a web browser. All relevant communications and documents are placed into this space as a collaborative workspace in addition to sending and receiving associated email.

By providing a collaborative workspace comprising wiki, document versioning, issue tracking and light-weight project management, I can add significant value to a project. This value exists in keeping all team members informed and capturing tacit knowledge which would otherwise be lost at the completion of a project. This value is not always obvious to a client, and needs to be marketed well to be appreciated.

Reality Check - A Real Client

All this is wonderful for a client who has poor internal systems, recognises the value in mine and participates enthusiastically. Although I have such clients, they are not the usual situation. A new client of mine was very quick to come back to me and say, "oh, we use Product-X to manage all this stuff" and made it quite clear they were not interested in participating with my system. Moreover, they immediately became concerned that important information about our project would be lost if I continued to use my system for their work.

My first reaction was to be 'put out' by this. They made no effort to even look at how my system would benefit our project! Of course I did not challenge my client on this point, I agreed politely that their existing system was important (more on that later), and then hunkered down to my own internal project of proving them wrong!

Venting Steam Productively

So I procured a copy of Product-X amd implemented an internal installation matching my client's installation. I explored different installation and deployment strategies and after a significant amount of internal work, I was happy I had found a way to provide a scalable, hosted, multiple instance web service of Product-X (which I now intend offering to new clients as an adjunct to my existing system).

Now I had learned Product-X inside and out, its pros and cons and the value it creates. I had burned off my initial frustration of being 'put out' with a solid look at my client's internal systems, and I now saw the immense value that Product-X already provided them. Of course their system was very important!

So how did it compare with mine? Sorry, but it does not even come close in terms of functionality. But that is not important to them.

Communicating On The Client's Terms

So now we communicate on my client's terms using their systems (which I now understand). Although their systems are inelegant, limited in functionality and require a lot of human intervention, their systems are their own. They know them, they have invested heavily in them, they use them and they value them. Moreover, they value me using them!

Lesson Learned

By taking time to understand the existing systems within an organisation and the mechanisms - both formal and informal - by which communications occur, by becoming knowledgeable in their use and participating in them (if appropriate), I add so much more value than I ever could by imposing my own requirements.

Communicating with clients on their terms may not be consistent with how you might want to operate. It might be inefficient and tedious. Unless you do so, however, neither of you will derive the true value from the relationship.

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

Information technology has made incredible leaps forward for business processes bringing efficiency, leverage of information, B2B transactions, management, reporting and much, much more.

Consider this, however: maybe we’re still on a plateau where the current IT toolbox is only appearing to meet most businesses' needs.

Unfulfilled need drives innovation. The more desperate the need, the greater the desire to innovate. I believe that only this kind of desire brings about adoption from a sea of bubbling IT and business process innovations happening all around us.

I believe that the current fiscal climate will indeed expose unfulfilled needs even in already well-run businesses.

As a product designer/developer, I tend to focus on product innovations. However, I see many parallels between product innovation and business process innovation.

In my recent article, Thoughts On Early Adoption, I listed the three Ts of an early adopter:

The Toy. Playing with our new toy just for the purpose of discovering everything it does.
The Tool. Integrating our gadget into our everyday life.
The Trash. Discarding the gadget in favour of something better.

Those businesses that are prepared to play with innovations around new IT and business process technologies, and that are willing to dump the ones that don’t work, will be the leaders.

We can either wait and see or jump in with a passion!

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

Some employers support it.
Some employers give lip service to it.
Professional bodies and associations demand it.
We all know we should be doing it.

Regularly!

But how many of us do?
How many of us further our education in a consistent and habitual way?

In my opinion, learning on the job does not constitute continuing education for the very reason that the skills learned or knowledge gained is intrinsic to the work you are presently doing. This does not mean that on the job learning is not important, just limiting. I believe that continuing education should be outside of the immediate scope of what you do in your work. Continuing education should be about preparing your self for new roles you aspire to or for exploring other interests which excite your enthusiasm.

How Much Is Enough?

This is really up to you but I can not imaging anything less than 4 hours a week is really of benefit. Somewhere between 4 and 16 hours per week is quite manageable even with work and family commitments. You'd be surprised where you are able to find those 16 hours from when you actually want to.

Structured Or Not?

For most of us the easiest way to continue our education is through formal courses of study. The benefits not only include having a structured learning environment pre-packaged for us but usually lead to formally recognised qualifications. Structured continuing education also has the most credibility in the eyes of our peers, employers and our family. Going it alone on the other hand might very well be far more rewarding and lead to skills and knowledge not easily acquired though formal courses. This kind of continuing education is not for everyone though. Its undisciplined nature requires a special focus and enthusiasm for it to really stick and become a valuable part of your learning.

A True Story

Some time back I hired a university graduate who took me by surprise. As a condition of his employment he requested a four day working week. He was clear he wanted one full day a week for continuing education. He was also very clear that this was not to be linked to any formal study but be used as he saw fit. Over the years of his employment there were times when his 'day off' was treated with contempt by his peers and by some management. However, in those years he brought new skills and capabilities to the organisation raising both the efficiency and the professionalism of the design group he worked in. Since then I have watched him grow from strength to strength in his career.

Just Do It

Decide how important continuing education really is to you and find a way to make it a habitual part of your week. Once you have decided, just do it!

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

I have just experienced an example of customer support that highlights a few important lessons. This is not in the category of 'support stories from hell', there are plenty of those around. This story had a good ending but the lessons to be learned were obvious.

Customer Support

For some time I have lived with a VPN problem on my modem/router and regularly visited the manufacturer's website looking for a firmware upgrade which specifically addressed the issue. While navigating the site I found the firmware page which indicated an update was available with links to both the firmware and the installation instructions. The instructions were there but no link to the firmware!

So begins the fun! I rang the manufacturer's support line and waited about 30 minutes on hold before being answered by a real person. I explained the problem with the website. The support person was very helpful and offered to send a copy of the firmware via email. The email promptly arrived. At this stage I was reasonable happy with the service.

After inspecting the firmware in more detail I realised that it was not correct. In fact it was more than 18 months old with at least two revisions since. I responded to the email and the email bounced back as having no recipient. So back to calling customer support again.

Another 30 minutes on hold later I fortunately got the same support person who was genuinely concerned about what had happened. I was put on hold again while they would look into what had happened. The call then dropped and I was left disconnected.

Calling now for the third time and another 30 minutes on hold later I got someone different. I explained to this new person what had happened and he proceeded to tell me that the firmware I had received was indeed the current and correct one. Only after I challenged him on this did he put me on hold again while he checked with his manager. While on hold for about 10 minutes this time I heard my incoming email and sure enough, there was the correct firmware. I waited for him to return, thanked him and ended the call.

New firmware now installed and tested I pondered on how a 5 minute task had turned itself into an 80 minute ordeal, involved maybe 5 individuals and diminished productivity all round. All from a single little mistake on a web support page.

Lessons Learned 1. - Get Someone to 'Play Customer'

Companies usually have a formal release process which checks that all steps in the release of some content to the customer have been followed. In this case either no such process existed or someone simply forgot a step. This is an example of a fragile process. One in which the consequence of a mistake is not initially obvious. The simple addition of a 'Play Customer' step would have turned a fragile process into a robust one. That final test of someone going through the experience of being a customer. Better yet, get a real customer to test it! You'd be surprised what customers notice or find that everyone else has missed.

Lessons Learned 2. - Get Your Story Right

There is nothing more frustrating than calling an organisation for support and getting conflicting or misleading information. The website showed one thing, the support people said another and had to be challenged on the issue to actualy discover the problem. Had I not pushed my story I would have gotten nowhere. Worse, had I blindly installed the firmware I had received I may have had bigger recovery problems to deal with.

Lessons Learned 3. - Get Feedback

I wonder how often a customer has a bad experience with customer support and simply drops the issue or even the product because it is too much effort. A quick follow up call or email (with a real email address I can respond to) is all it would take to ascertain the success of a support incident. I certainly will not bother to give any feedback if I have to wait 30 minutes on hold just to say "yes, all is fine now".

So in summary, customer support has to be friendly, efficient, accurate and consistent. This might sound expensive but without it those hidden costs of flapping around and losing product confidence will be significantly more costly.


Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

During my early years as a practising engineer I remember being preached to about 'best practice'. Later as an engineering manager I was the one doing the preaching. "To be a world class engineering team we need to do what world class engineering teams do, implement best practice". But what does best practice really mean and is it really the best thing to do?

The 'myth' is that for any operation there is a best combination of processes to yield the best outcome for the minimum effort or cost. For example, if you need to track and manage software issues you'd look at how the best software companies in the world track and manage software issues. You'd automatically label their process as best practice and implement the same. You'd be forgiven for assuming this means best outcome for minimum effort, ... or would you?

As I see it there are two main problems with the idea of 'best practice'. They are suitability and mediocrity.

suitability

Is an industry best practice really the best solution for your operation? Would taking on a best practice impose process and rules counter productive to your unique operation? Would this so called best practice actually put you at a disadvantage?

mediocrity

As an advocate of innovation this issue is one of my favourites. How can you really shine if all you do is the same as everyone else? Sure it is important to know what best practice is, not to copy but to benchmark outcome against effort. This is what is really important to understand as it allows you to be innovative and craft new ways of doing things.

innovate

So next time you’re preached to about best practice or find yourself in the best practice pulpit, stop and think about what you are really trying to achieve. Look at industry best practice to benchmark outcome against effort then innovative and design your own exceptional operation.

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

Have you ever found yourself in a business meeting and from nowhere comes an idea which may have some value but is not in keeping with the current conversation? How often have you simply made a mental note to yourself to remember it for later? Did you!?

Making a mental note of an idea is a bad idea for more reasons than just the risk of forgetting it.

Consider these three points:

1. Making mental notes to remember ideas risks them being forgotten.
2. Making mental notes to remember ideas blocks your creativity for new ideas.
3. Making mental notes to remember ideas engenders a 'scarcity' mentality.

I am a firm believer in the abundance of ideas and the need to get them out there, get them written down or give them away as fast as possible.

Verbalise

In meetings try and verbalise ideas as fast as possible. Get them out into the open. If an idea is out of context then write is down instead so as to not disrupt the conversation.

Write

There will be times where you simply can't verbalise your ideas so write them down. Write them the moment they enter your thoughts then put your attention back to the conversation again. At the end of the meeting, tear out the page and offer what you have written.

Abundance vs Scarcity

When you share an idea you create a space for the next to follow. The more you share the more ideas come along and the more chance you give yourself to have those truly breakthrough ideas. When you sit on an idea, brood over it and keep it secret out of fear the effect is the complete opposite. Ideas become scarce and mediocre and creativity withers. This paradigm is every much as true for companies as it is for individuals.

Being sharing and abundant with your ideas must of course be tempered with corporate responsibilities. Legal instruments such as non-disclosure will help here but the more you can share ‘off the cuff’ the more abundant your ideas and creativity will become.

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

While recently watching someone playing solitaire during their lunch break I found myself wondering if this was a healthy break from the job, a sign of problematic undercurrents or just a mindless addiction.

From these thoughts came a novel idea you might like to consider.

Solitaire as a Management Metric

Could you actually use solitaire playing as a management metric? You could record the number of times solitaire is played during designated breaks and normal work periods, and whether games were played over until a win occurred or the player gave up.

The true value of solitaire as a metric is to not let people know it is being monitored. This ensures it remains a valid indicator of the player and his/her environment. You could then introduce other changes to the workplace and see how solitaire playing behaviour changes.

Of course, using solitaire as a management metric must be done with care and not taken too seriously. But who knows what you might learn! At least it would be fun to try out. If you do, please let me know what you discover.

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

The problem with wikis is that they are only as good as the content created and the use made of that content. Of course this sounds obvious, but it must be understood that a good wiki does not happen by simply putting it into an organisation and seeing what happens.

Here's the rub... A truly powerful wiki comes from enthusiastic participation of all the users in a wiki community. The diverse nature of that community, however, means that participation by all almost never happens! At best, a handful of contributors populate and manage the wiki content. If you are lucky, the rest of the community uses it. Even if a wiki is seen as a useful forum for information sharing, it will probably fall short of the potential value it can deliver.

A friend of mine who is a talented software engineer used a wonderful little trick to solve the problem in a beautifully simple way. Whenever he was asked to explain something, or to provide help or advice, he would trade that advice for the other person's participation in creating wiki content. In other words, "I'll help you if you write it up in the wiki".

An organisation is full of tacit knowledge which exists in the minds of its people. This know-how has been traditionally shared through asking, through conversation, through mimicry and other forms of on-the-job training - all very inefficient and highly risky to an organisation where key individuals are concerned. By creating a genuine reason to capture this information, by making it valuable enough for someone to put into a wiki, everyone will participate for their own self interest and the greater good of the entire wiki community.

My software engineering friend found a simple way to engage an entire wiki community in his organisation. Before long, their wiki become a treasure trove of tacit know-how and a significant asset to both productivity and to managing the business risk of key people's knowledge.

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

My sincere apologies for an article that will add absolutely no value. However, I came across a wonderful little piece of trivia I just could not help but share.

Anyone who has had anything to do with digital media devices, especially digital cameras, would be well acquainted with the ubiquitous SD memory card.

They seem like they have been around forever even though we first saw them in 2000.

Now look carefully at the logo.

Notice that the 'D' resembles one half of an optical disk such as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. The 'SD' logo actually stood for 'Super Density Disc', Toshiba's failed DVD format.

I guess someone could not see the point in employing a graphic designer when they could borrow an old piece of work that already looked the part!

My thanks to Wikipedia for that wonderful piece of enlightenment!

Robert Rath – http://www.innovation-mentor.com

Today I stumbled across Steve Swan's blog, 'thinkinghow.com'. His article 'think fast and get more ideas' got me thinking about the problem of being 'idea abundant'.

Problem? I hear you ask!

I know some very creative, inventive people who are simply un-stoppable when it comes to generating ideas. In the workplace they first come across as quirky and novel. It's fun to have someone always coming up with another cool idea - for a while at least!

We live in a world of ever increasing pressure to do more with less in diminishing time scales. If you are a peer, then that new idea turns into 'Don't bug me, I'm busy'. If you are a manager, then that new idea turns into 'I have enough on my plate already'. Pretty soon that enthusiastic 'idea abundance' can take a beating and fade into background noise. To me this is an all too real tragedy of our busy workplaces.

I believe ideas are far more abundant than we realise. Many of us have simply stopped offering them. Others seem more resilient. Ask yourself the following questions.

a) How can we create an environment where ideas are offered without resistance?
b) How can we grow an idea-abundant culture?
c) How can we sort the trivial from the terrific?
d) How can we take action when the right idea comes along?

If you find yourself starting to design a system or process around these questions, then you have just graduated from the very first lesson of creativity and innovation. You need a well structured system or process if you want to consistently have great ideas and turn them into successful outcomes.

A good process will encourage the contribution of ideas and reward the participants without overwhelming already burdened peers and management. In this way, the abundance of ideas will quickly become part of culture rather than the annoying banter of a resilient few!


Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

I am currently involved in a messaging migration project from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. Part of the process involved creating an installation of Outlook which contains all service packs and hotfixes recommended by Microsoft.

Rather than accept each hotfix in blind faith, I was eager to learn more about each fix. Here is what I found in one instance.

Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (KB953432)

Brief Description

This update (KB953432) resolves an issue where Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 behaves unexpectedly in some circumstances.


Now either this was a case of 'too hard to explain', or someone just got lazy. In any case it left me decidedly uncomfortable with the lack of communication.

Would you blindly accept this level of communication from someone you did not trust? Do we really trust Microsoft?! I don't think we do, yet we now religiously accept updates and hotfixes with almost paranoid fear that if we don't, our PC will turn into virus-ridden email spamming bots. Sure there are some real threats out there we need to protect ourselves from, but not at the risk of all being lemmings headed for some looming precipice.

So please Microsoft, I'm happy to use your hotfix but I want to know why and be confident I really need it. I need your communications to be useful.

Of course I included it, I'm sure it's needed, how could I not! I trust them because they are Microsoft.

Robert Rath - http://www.innovation-mentor.com

In his recent article, ‘Congruence and life on the Internet’, Zern Liew brings to light a real sleeping giant for all of us, our ‘digital footprint’ and how it represents us in an on-line world.

We all live multi-faceted lives with careers, family, friends and pastimes. It used to be very easy to keep them separate in a public sense.

Web-based social spaces are becoming very much a part of these once-separate facets, with the sharing of photos with family and friends, connected social networks, connected professional networks and so on.

Zern is so right about the importance of congruence and of being consistent! So much can be learned and even misinterpreted about who we are by our web presence — our ‘digital footprint’.

Google a person’s name and now more than ever you will find them in both professional and social networks. Astute employers are probably already doing this and making decisions about hiring or promoting based on what they think about your presence on these sites.

My advice is to plan your web presence. Think very carefully about the social spaces you join and how you present yourself there. Most importantly, as Zern points out, be consistent! Be a model of integrity.

Assume any comment, post or link you make anywhere will be seen and acted on by your spouse, your employer, your family or others. If you have congruence within your digital footprint, people will trust that you are as you appear. If not, people will be unsure and your relationships and opportunities may suffer.

Robert Rath – http://www.innovation-mentor.com