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Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

steveblank.substack.com

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Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#51

Post by Scubabear68 »

I am currently working with a very large company that has this problem. They are highly risk adverse and are happy to pay $100 up front to avoid a $1 accidental loss.

Of course, all the processes don’t really protect them, they just get slowed down by a factor of 100 or more.

The successful people take on as many simultaneous projects as they can, because any one project will move at a snails pace.

I have told them tales of working on some internal document processing and classification systems in a fintech a few years ago where we would release to prod multiple times a day to test out different algorithms and approaches.

They flat out think I am lying.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#52

Post by laidoffamazon »

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?

The promotion thing seems severely overstated. At the higher levels for IC and management this is basically how all tech companies that build products are run. But you don't see this said about Microsoft or Amazon, even though they also have hundreds of new features and discrete new products per year.

My theory for why Google is different remains unpopular, however.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#53

Post by groestl »

Large organizations don't improve by innovating. As the article mentions, they focus on sustaining the existing business model, anything that diverges from process potentially destroys the revenue source. Instead, they improve by acquisitions. Of innovative companies.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#54

Post by ahstilde »

MichaelRo wrote: post #35

>> Why is it that innovations require heroics to occur in our organization? Why do we immediately assume that innovation = progress? Sure, the things that SURVIVE are useful, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of ideas are just like mutations in evolution more likely to be at best useless and probably damaging in various ways. You see, social constructs are not as dumb as they appear to be to t…

Innovation is required for progress. The alternative to innovation is stagnation. The end result of stagnation is death.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#55

Post by dekhn »

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?

beyond just launching a product, the launch has to have some sort of "impact" (at least, this was true in the time period where I was trying to get promoted, roughly 2010-2013). Something that is not perceived as impactful by the promo committee is likely not going to count towards promotion. It's the job of the employee and manager to document the "impact".

If your manager is a director or higher, they can appeal the promo denial and an appeals committee can be manipulated into giving a promotion. That's what happened to me- promo saw no impact to my launch. Then my director went to appeals and basically said "promote him, he's doing good work".

Everything about Google messed up my expectations and planning around career. To work anywhere else (a startup, or a pharma) I had to unlearn all the bad habits of self-promotion and cookie-licking and impact-demonstration.

Of course many people joke the best way to get promoted at Google is to leave, get promoted elsewhere, and return to Google at a higher level (using all your newly learned negotiation skills).

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#56

Post by wonderwonder »

A long time ago I burned out and took a few years of leave from tech and instead took a document processing / generation job at a very large non tech travel / leisure focused company. Company used an archaic document generation system that had to have templates built by hand. then there was a significant amount of manual work moving data from microsoft excel to word. All Manual. My group consisted of myself, 4 other document processors, 2 leads and a director.

This team generated all of the sales documents for the company; thousands of templates.

Within weeks I wrote some VBA macros that automated 75% of the process and they promoted me to manager a couple months later.

What I found fascinating though was the group of existing document specialists were not suddenly capable of doing 2 - 3x the work. They just appeared to move slower. It was like pulling blood from a stone. They had no interest in learning new work which they were now free to do, they just wanted to clock in, turn their mind off for 8 hours, click the button and clock out.

40% of the staff at large companies are likely not needed and can be automated away.

Kind of made me feel sad.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#57

Post by justin_oaks »

debacle wrote: post #23

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…

> 100 reasons not to change

I'm reminded of the article "Layers of Management == Layers of Veto" [0]. In the article the author explains that each layer of management is likely to veto each idea coming from below. Each idea that didn't come from above is "insubordination" and likely to be vetoed.

[0] https://slott56.github.io/2010_02_12-layers_of_management_la...

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#58

Post by entropicdrifter »

btbuildem wrote: post #33

Not sure that you can fix a calcified bureaucracy with "doctrine". I sort of get the angle, I think -- if the org operates within a rigid rule framework, you need to speak their language to get anywhere -- so, doctrine is best, because everyone is used to being told what to do? I feel like that approach is counter to the spirit of innovation, that's akin to being forced to have fun; nothing truly innovative will come…

"Innovation doctrine" is a contradictory phrase on its face, really. Going, "Oh we need a static, unchanging set of rules for innovation" doesn't exactly sound like a good way to attract and retain innovative thinkers lmao

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#59

Post by agentultra »

“Engineering is doing well with $1 what another person could figure out with $2,” I heard from somewhere.

This often involves, in larger groups, communicating with folks and taking the time to understand the requirements.

Although I despise “5 whys,” almost as much as scrum; it does often boil down to dysfunctional organizations.

It saddens me when a highly productive development team gets pulled down by non-productive bureaucratic middle-management and politics. There often is a class of worker that doesn’t want to do meaningful work and sees the value generated by other people as an opportunity to take a ride to the top.

There should be a few check points in an organization where one needs to ask for permission but going too far down that road puts a ceiling on how productive any one group can be.

Good article; definitely need to remove barriers.

Re: Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

#60

Post by OldGuyInTheClub »

nathan_compton wrote: post #2

God yes please give us an "innovation doctrine." This is certainly an interesting article to read about but I'm not sure his suggestions or analysis are that substantive. Complex institutions develop rules to simplify decision making and streamline information flows. They choke otherwise. "Develop an innovation doctrine" isn't really effective advice.

I agree. I am in aerospace. When times are good, there's money to bring in speakers like this every couple of months to talk to our management. We get the slides afterward and they are refreshingly free of content. All of them essentially repeat the cliche, "Think outside the box!"

We even got one of those Innovation Forums where people could propose ideas, get them upvoted, with the promise of tchotchkes at the end for success. Not a single one got funded. Every efficiency improvement, every streamlining suggestion affects someone's budget and headcount. When that person has to approve, nothing will happen. And, in this industry, a lot of rules are actually law. They have to be followed.

But, the consultants and professional keynote speakers seem to be making good money off of it.

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