Here is a sequence of events that is familiar to us from our research, and may be familiar to you as well.
A CEO announces that the strategic imperative for the upcoming year is breakthrough growth. Incremental growth from incremental initiatives is no longer enough. To continue to thrive, the company must do new things. It must break all of the rules. It must redefine the industry.
Motivational speakers and experts on innovation are hired to inspire the troops, create the right conversations, and get the creative juices flowing. The company establishes a committee to review preliminary ideas for new growth opportunities. Dozens are submitted. A handful are selected for further research. Business plans are written. There is one plan in particular that looks most promising.
The CEO examines the possibility from every angle. There are many reasonable projects competing for the firm's capital, but none have the chance to reinvigorate growth like this one. The CEO hires an outside expert, and receives confirmation that the high-growth-potential business looks like winner. It is a done deal. The CEO commits to the plan, assigns the best available general manager to lead the strategic experiment, and asks a member of the senior corporate staff to shepherd it.
And then the CEO makes a big mistake.
The CEO moves on to other matters. The new business, after all, is but a tiny fraction of a multi-billion-dollar organization.
Asked to think about the challenges of innovation, most managers think first of the creative, brilliant, and inspired soul that sees the future in a different way -- a rebel on a mission. It is a romance deeply embedded in our business culture.
The CEO's mistake is buying into the romance. The mistake is assuming that the company has already hurdled the most difficult barriers in the innovation journey -- finding a great idea and a great leader. In fact, the biggest challenges are still to come.
Ideas will only get you so far. Consider companies that have struggled when their competitors have redefined the industry. In these cases, companies continued to struggle even after a competitor had entered the market and made the great idea transparent to all. For example, did Xerox stumble because nobody at Xerox noticed that Canon had introduced personal copiers? Did Kodak fall behind because they were blind to the rise of digital photography? Did Sears suffer a decline because they had no awareness of Wal-Mart's new every-day-low-price discount retailing format?
In every case, the ideas were there. It was the follow-through that was lacking. In fact, we have found that strategic experiments face their stiffest resistance after they are showing hints of success, are starting to grow, are consuming significant resources, and are clashing with the existing organization at multiple levels -- that is, long after the idea generation stage.
If the problem at Xerox, Kodak, and Sears was not a lack of good ideas, was it a lack of capable leaders? Perhaps, but before jumping to this conclusion, consider whether leaving a strategic experiment solely in the hands of a single leader is a realistic task for even the most talented executive. Can any one person single-handedly work around all of the inconsistencies between the demands of large established businesses and the needs of startups?
While we trust that there are examples of ingenious, creative, and highly determined souls who can overcome both the long odds that face any strategic experiment and an organization that fights them at every turn, we think they are extremely rare. Organizations are almost always more powerful than people. Corporations serious about building a capacity for strategic innovation cannot simply hope that they have a few intrapreneurs somewhere inside that can save the day on their own inspired initiative. They must reexamine how their organizations are constructed. Only through careful redesign can organizations excel at both efficiency and entrepreneurship.
Much has also been made in past research of the need for leaders of strategic experiments to have a senior executive "champion" -- a constant aide, always actively finding support for NewCo and helping to break down barriers. No doubt such a champion can help, but even with effective champions, odds of success are still low.
Simply put, relying solely on the heroic leadership of a hyper-talented intrapreneur, even one with a great idea, even one backed by a motivated and capable senior executive champion, is a recipe for failure.
Adapted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators - From Idea to Execution, by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. Copyright © 2005 Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. All Rights Reserved.
Related Stories: | Topics:Leadership, Chris Trimble, Vijay Govindarajan, Xerox Corporation, Sears Holding Corporation, Harvard Business School |
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
Recent Comments | 11 Total
December 26, 2005 at 4:26am by Dharmendra
Right strategy, right leader and right team members working at right time creates a successful company.
It is very difficult to have everything right. A small company may have flexibility but very often it fails to adapt as per stmbling changes in business fortunes.
A big company have have financial depth but it lacks in tuning of different attributes.
December 26, 2005 at 3:33pm by becky
Super heroes are just a figment... It takes a village.
December 27, 2005 at 1:20am by Greg Balanko-Dickson
Innovation needs more than lip service it needs to be at the core of the corporate culture becauase Passion and Curiosity Begets Innovation but that only takes you so far. The company needs to be able to :a href="http://sbishere.com/2005/12/21/corporate-culture-can-your-company-think-differently-and-tolerate-diversity/">Think Differently and Tolerate Diversity while having innovation at the very core of its DNA, like MOEN.
December 28, 2005 at 2:31am by Christopher Sansone
Innovation (ideation) and leadership are a team effort. We might learn from our Boy Scout friends about training and successful result minded efforts. I’ve found the real strength comes from the innovator (most often). It's key that the leader assigns an innovator the task of teaching them (how they believe) the project should flow. The leader and the innovator will work together (the leader accepts the role as student) to achieve milestones.
Drifting apart should be narrowed by the occasional milestone, ideation, and evaluation session.
December 28, 2005 at 5:20am by Tim Reid
Never truer words spoken when it comes to the generation of ideas. I run idea workshops in Australia for companies of all sizes and I make it a major point-of-difference in my offering to ensure the need for a 'follow-up' process is recognised prior to the start of any workshop. How many times have we been to a great brainstorming session that's resulted in many killer ideas, only to see the resulting document six months later gathering dust on the manager's shelf? This is both frustrating and de-motivating...And devalues any future sessions of a similar nature.
Getting a good idea is easy (relatively!). Finding people who want to work on its implementation is also easy...Afterall, get it right and you become a hero within your organisation. Actually following through with the execution and measurement is the hard part. Especially if things start to look not so rosey.
So, in summary, I suggest spending time in the brainstorming session to generate ways to ensure the implementation and execution of the idea stays on track. And as the article rightly suggests, ensure senior management keep a close watch on the project's progress.
Cheers...TIM The Ideas Guy
www.theideasguy.com.au
December 28, 2005 at 1:06pm by Gary Dobbs
Hmmmm. The strategic imperative "euphoria" is familiar to me and it is relieving to know that I am not the only one with the problem. How does one make the change into a person that can deliver and execute? Well, I am reading "E-Myth Mastery" by Michael E. Gerber and I have found it to be fuel for my soul, like, someone has been watching me all these years and wrote a book to fix all my shortcomings and inconsistencies, you know, why Bill Gates is not Gary Dobbs. I do not run a multi-billion dollar company, yet, but I do head a small real estate brokerage and I have dreams of what I get up for each day. If we all were able to articulate a business like Michael Gerber I think we would be onto something.
December 28, 2005 at 1:09pm by Steve Tooker
So what's the answer? You have a great idea that could revolutionize the industry; a young, talented leader with the proper vision and character to lead a company; and the financial backing of a parent company to support the project. If I understand the point of the author in this article, he seems to be suggesting that this is the easy part and that it's the actual follow through of actually making that vision a reality that's the hard part, correct? So given this situation, what can be done to increase the chances of business success and actually making the idea, the business, and the vision a reality and a success? I realize this isn’t some magical formula but I know there’s other people who have years of experience analyzing business startups and there must be certain laws of success for business startups and big ideas that lead to success. If anyone has any advice they can offer on this subject, I would greatly appreciate it.
December 28, 2005 at 1:52pm by Ariane Benefit
This is so true it hurts. I'm also an idea person. Having learned over the years that if you don't follow-through, others can't possibly execute your ideas the way you intended, I'm very careful about choosing which ideas to even attempt. My strategy now is to keep an idea file...if I'm still really passionate about the idea after 2-3 months, then I may share the idea and begin execution. For me to follow-through, it has to be a passion. Otherwise the next new idea can and will distract me.
Great book on this topic is "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" by Larry Bossidy
December 28, 2005 at 7:40pm by roger fulton
The top-cat ferrets out THE idea, appoints a "hit" team to do it. Put a John Wayne or Bruce Willis in front, give him command of the troops and a 007 license. Back away, stay out of his way and let him do it. I don't know if the fair-haired toe dancers like The Donald can stand NOT to be in EVERY single decision, but if it were ME, that's how I would do it.
December 30, 2005 at 7:02am by Alan Walker
Hello from England (UK), do any of you brilliant people know (1) if the publication "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" by Larry Bossidy as mentioned by Ariane Benefit (28-12-05)is available in software? (2)I can recommend hardcopy of "Strategic Analysis for Venture Evaluation " by W.Park & J. Maillie pub. by Van Nostrand Reinhold as 1st class business system, have not been able to find software edition.
Kind regards - Alan Walker
December 31, 2005 at 2:21am by mahendrakumardash
The gap between ideas ,innovation or execution or acceptance of ledership to the innovative ideas is quite large.Very few ledership wants change in approach.Most want their way.Of course ,now things are changing,but is is the privilege of the few.The company which is open to change and which encourages ideas and inovations and where the leadership accepts it for betterment of the company,the company flourishes.