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Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

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Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#21

Post by Pet_Ant »

shermantanktop wrote: post #17

Reminds me of the Drucker quote about “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The problem is that large organizations naturally drift toward inertia and ossification. If a forward-looking leader wants the culture to change, they are faced with a conundrum: - use a strategy like this (e.g. some top-down “innovation center” approved at the C level) which reinforces the rigidity and process-oriented thinking that needs t…

Innovation means potential for failure and waste. The larger the company the more it's investors want it for steady predictable returns. Even shrinking returns as long as they are steady and foreseeable. A large company becomes about control. Look at summer blockbusters. They know the demographics that will see it and have a pretty good (not absolute) idea of how much they can make.

This is all by design.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#23

Post by debacle »

One addendum to this that I have observed: In many organizations, no one is "in charge." If change needs to happen, there are 100 checkboxes, 100 reasons not to change, 100 people who are concerned about their career, resume, budget, department, relevance, etc.

For every "innovation hero" that wins an award, there are 5 who are "managed" into leaving, marginalized, or disenfranchised. The high nail gets the hammer. I have been into and out of the startup space for the last 20 years, and most of the times that I was an "innovation hero" it was because there was one person in a corner office who was using me as a proxy for a change they wanted to see happen.

The American system of organizational management is...basically glue.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#25

Post by setgree »

tredigi wrote: post #8
setgree wrote: post #4

I favor the general point here, but the leading anecdote doesn’t really fit with the lessons learned. A government organization generally does not need an innovation doctrine to avoid being outcompeted because they are a monopoly provider. They maintain that monopoly through force. If you want to get a government agency to perform better, fix the incentives.

Doesn't the leading anecdote give an example of a (dis)incentive that needs fixing? That it takes 10 months and lots of head-banging and then you get a $100 bonus, that would certainly disincentivise me to do any type of innovation.

It does, but the last lesson learned is:

> All large organizations – both government and corporate—need an innovation doctrine or else risk being outpaced by competitors.

I don’t think the anecdote fits conclusion. The reasons to innovate are many, but being outcompeted is not that salient to, say, an IT person in some agency.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#26

Post by EncomLab »

Relate to the four stages of employment: 1) This is the new person "X" - they are amazing and are going to solve everything! 2) "X" is pretty good, but maybe not as good as we thought. 3) "X" turned out to just be another average performer. 4) "X" is obviously terrible or they would have left for someplace that would treat them better than we do.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#27

Post by chuckadams »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #12
chuckadams wrote: post #5

"Innovation Doctrine" sounds like something you put next to your Mission Statement. How about fostering an internal discussion board where employees can pitch ideas and get hooked up with others who know how to implement them? If you need guard rails around the anarchy, then you can tie action items to a ticket tracking system that's readable by the whole company. I can file a bug in JIRA against any product my compa…

Because in large companies, any helpful suggestions get lost in the noise. Everyone has opinions on how things could be done better, but very few of them are good.

The discussion forum still has to be managed (I said "anarchy" facetiously) and at least minimal standards of professionalism would still have to apply. And if the board still devolves into a swamp of griping and bickering, then well, they can nuke it and at least say they tried.

Most ideas are indeed crap, and the good ones have to be picked out. But reducing the total number of ideas doesn't raise the percentage of good ones.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#28

Post by shermantanktop »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #21
shermantanktop wrote: post #17

Reminds me of the Drucker quote about “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The problem is that large organizations naturally drift toward inertia and ossification. If a forward-looking leader wants the culture to change, they are faced with a conundrum: - use a strategy like this (e.g. some top-down “innovation center” approved at the C level) which reinforces the rigidity and process-oriented thinking that needs t…

Innovation means potential for failure and waste. The larger the company the more it's investors want it for steady predictable returns. Even shrinking returns as long as they are steady and foreseeable. A large company becomes about control. Look at summer blockbusters. They know the demographics that will see it and have a pretty good (not absolute) idea of how much they can make. This is all by design.

This can be by design, sure. But I think it is also an inexorable tendency for people in large groups. Once your company is 10x Dunbar’s number, it is very hard for “we” to mean the entire company.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#29

Post by nutrie »

tredigi wrote: post #14

I agree to the overall tone, but there are also counter points. One of them is the Google example. To get promoted beyond a certain level, you must have brought some new product over the finish line. Result? They have so many new things happening all the time, all of them suck, and then just move on to the next. Eg how many chat products do they need to invent before they settle on one and let it mature?

100 %. There's a sweet spot. I worked for both, start-ups and huge corporations. It's not one or the other, you want the right combination of maturity and fresh attitude. We often don't realize it can take years to steer back to find the balance again, but not oversteer, which is usually the default :) Just as with any other organism.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#30

Post by betenoire »

setgree wrote: post #4

I favor the general point here, but the leading anecdote doesn’t really fit with the lessons learned. A government organization generally does not need an innovation doctrine to avoid being outcompeted because they are a monopoly provider. They maintain that monopoly through force. If you want to get a government agency to perform better, fix the incentives.

I immediately thought of the government. I interned for the transportation department. I was one of these "innovation heros". It was a budget thing as explained to me. If I didn't have work to do, they told me to do homework, I wasn't even allowed to help people on things outside of my department, since they'd have to report on that in budgeting details and be accountable of it to the taxpayer.
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