How to get your organization fit to innovate at scale

In the webinar today, we're going to start with Tendai doing a little around getting started and goals. So that's a good place to start in January. Alex is going to share a little bit about the strategizer journey to date and then I'm going to come and share a little bit around the role of governance in setting up your innovation functions and moving smoothly at scale.

The one thing that we find is really difficult for companies, it's just like getting started. Like, you know, how do you actually get started? And getting started is kind of difficult because you need to get the right people and you need to get them trained, then they need to get some experience and practice on how to do the innovation. So getting started can become something that's actually really, really, really, really, really kind of difficult. And what we've learned also over time, sometimes that innovation training is just not enough. Right. Even if you have like world class greatest coach Michael Wilkins doing it for you, it's not always like, you know, easy to just sort of get that done very, very, very, very quickly. And, and what's interesting is how do you go from training to consistent action? How do you go from driving the training and then getting people to actually do. And so we've been thinking about this a lot because again, the goal is how do you quickly get to scale, right, without spending a lot? I mean, one way to get action is to hire a whole bunch of coaches, hire a bunch of consultants, get another company to come in and do venture building for you. So all these things, these are all things that can actually be expensive for you. And so Alex has been involved in an interesting conversation with the great Steve Blanket and they came up with quite an interesting analogy. And I'm curious to what people might type in the, in the chat window. It's like both get you hot and bothered. I like that one. Everyone knows we should do it, but no one does. Exactly. Consistency, practicing it, create a routine, then be accountable to somebody else and do with a team. Like, that's really, really perfect, Ren. That's a real perfect description there. Okay, cool. So let's play with that metaphor a little bit more. Right, so what do we talk about? What are we talking about when we're talking about a series of exercises, right? It's a series of exercises that can get you fit so you can do a whole bunch of stuff like, like what's shown in the icons here. But again, it's not enough to know what you need to do. Right? It's not enough to know how to do a sit up or not to do a pushup, you also have to do it. And that, you know, doing it can be really, really tough. Another thing that's also true about, about exercising is that if you do like random exercises, you might get some results, but they're not going to be very good. If you just like pick any one of these, just go in the gym and just do any one of these exercises at random, you may not actually get really, really good results. And even worse than that, if you just do your favorite exercises, you might get incomplete results, maybe end up that, and maybe end up looking like this bloke who's just like, you know, muscular at the top, has got skinny legs because again, they're doing incomplete, incomplete exercises. So what really, really matters, I think is being clear on our goals. What is it that we're actually trying to accomplish? Because once we're clear on our goals, then the exercises can be organized into an actual program that then allows you to get a routine, you know, be accountable, et cetera, et cetera. So you can take all these like mishmash of different exercises instead of organizing them into a fitness routine or a fitness program where you do some stuff on Monday, maybe on your arms and your core on Tuesday, your legs on Wednesday, back to the arms, et cetera, et cetera. So you've got like a way of organizing all of this as a way to make it, you know, a consistent practice. So let's take this practice again and think, well, how did it actually apply, how did it actually apply to innovation? Well, innovation is a series of exercises that can get you innovation success. You can see the ideation, business model, design, testing metrics, experimentation, etc. It's a whole bunch of exercises that can get you to innovation success, but it's not enough to know any of these things. So I've met a lot of people very good at value proposition design, for example, but haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how to then take those value propositions and make them successful business models. I know a lot of people that are very good at like doing customer interviews, but they don't know like how to translate that into a value, into a product or a service and then scaling that. And so it's important that you know it's not enough to know you actually have to go out and do it. And if you pick any one of these things and just do them at random again, you won't get good results. And if you only do your favorites, you'll get Incomplete results. So, for example, and this is not to. This is not to be insulting, but one of the. One of the. One of the. One of. One of our sources of customers, a strategizer, are people who've done the design sprint, right? And so they did the design sprint, and it was a week, and they thought that they were going to get massive results from that, but it was just a week. And after that, they really don't know what to do next. And so then we start working with them to try and take them on the fuller journey. So, again, you do just your favorites. You do a bit of design thinking, you talk to customers, you do empathy, you come up with a prototype, and then what happens next? So you really have to be thinking about that. And if you're really clear on your goals, then it's easier to actually design. And through our work and experience, we've actually landed on this understanding that even though people might want to claim this, innovation is not a black box, like, we know, regardless of what business you're in, we know exactly what we're trying to accomplish or what we can define as a successful innovation. A successful innovation is a combination of value propositions that resonate with customers combined with business models that are scalable and profitable. That's what we're searching for. And then if you put that together with great execution, then you're far more likely to accomplish the success that you want. So we know that this is the success formula. And so we're trying to get people to organize their innovations into a program that allows them to accomplish this sort of successful criteria there. So once we're clear on our goals, then you can. These exercises can then be organized into a program again. So it's really fascinating because then when you think about our discovery program, you can then start to organize it into consistent practices that are connected to each other. How do you start an innovation program? How do you generate ideas? How do you design business models? How do you test those? How do you use those results of that testing to make decisions? How do you then continue to carry on after that, making the decisions to manage your portfolio, kill some ideas, or continue with other ideas? And so once we know that this is a process and a practice that's repeatable, just like physical exercise, this is how we then ended up, you know, and if you have different goals, exactly what Alex is saying, you can. You can design different programs, and also depending on what you learn during the program, you can change direction, but it's all kind of systematic and it's A and is a. And it's a practice that you can follow. And so this is how we landed on the Strategizer innovation management platform. Because then you can design programs that the people can use on a, on a consistent basis. But again, remember, the theme is how do you get started quickly and how do you get more value as you try and scale innovation? And we really believe that once you understand that you can organize these into a program, you're far more likely to be able to create that value.

Perfect. So the reason why we're talking about governance is really because that's something that we need to work on as well. So it's understanding how to progress your ideas. Actually, it looked like from what we could see today, there's still some trouble there. And having it in a program, program is one thing, but we also need to think about governance. So just thinking about what the wish list is from innovators, from some of our clients, and the work that we've done on how to keep innovation moving forward at scale is an agreed process for innovation activity. So what do I do with the new idea? How do I progress my idea? Who do I go to for support? What is our approach to innovation? So maybe you've got folks in your innovation team who know how to do innovation. They've read the books, they've gone to webinars, they've done all these things. But maybe it's not been aligned with the governance board, for example. And then you've got people doing things and trying to agree in two different ways. So that's one area, also a clear pathway for funding, I think. Alex, you often say money is not actually the problem. Getting the money isn't the problem. The problem sometimes is actually just knowing where to go to get that money or how to get the money, or when to go and apply for the money. What do you need to do to get the money? Do you need to submit a form? What. What does that look like? So that process there to ensure that you can actually get it.

I think actually the money that is spent today is poorly spent. So, you know, some companies would force the team go to go from IDEA to launch. When you force everybody to go from idea to launch, well, a nobody wants to fail, so they're going to play it safe. And the other one that's going to happen is that, you know, what we see at the end of the day is, you know, maybe three out of 30 projects actually achieve the results. So we should not let everybody to go from idea to launch. We should Let everybody start. That's a conviction that we have. Everybody should be able to start, but we should kill 70% of projects after three months and they should be okay. And teams should be comfortable with that.

Absolutely. Great. Good add. The third thing that we're going to point out is also just transparent and efficient decision making. Again, as you can see, do you have an established board who makes those decisions? What does good look like? How do I know what the success criteria is? What are the impacts of the decision? You sometimes have boards or innovators who go to get a decision on moving to the next step and then wait for weeks and weeks and weeks to get a response and to not really be super clear on what the decision means. Do they need to get more people in? Do they need to pivot in some way? So having clear, transparent decision making and also efficient decision making is also an ask. But there's also something else and that relates back to the goals and New Year's resolutions that Tenday was talking about earlier. And so I just want to ask you real quickly to go into the chat. For those of you who have made goals for 2020, I'm curious, how much progress have you made on your New Year's resolutions? And one more question then for you as well. For those of you who are still working on your resolutions, haven't stopped yet. What is helping you to continue? Community holding each other accountable? Great. Accountability. Perfect. So I was hoping some of you would say that. I've also got a fitness goal for this year. And I'll be honest, I think I was doing really well last week. It's kind of dropped off a little bit. I quite liked seeing my results. I had a nice little app that was helping me to see my progress. And in the short term, having something visible to you might be nice. Having it in a program is really nice. But in the long term, you might want some kind of accountability partner. I've started up with a friend of mine, a little WhatsApp discussion between the two of us, helping to encourage each other to go back to the gym and maybe even going together. So those accountability partners can be really helpful for the long term. There's a point to this. I'm going to come back to governance in a moment, but I just want to share two stats with you around accountability. You have a 65% chance of completing a goal. If you tell someone else you're committing to doing it, that's one thing. Then you have a 95% chance of success in completing a goal. If you have Specific check ins with an accountability partner. How does this all relate? If we look at accountability partner, this is someone who might check in on your established goals, ask about your progress, provide constructive criticism, support in removing blockers. And what if we just thought of a governance board as an accountability partner because actually the governance board is also checking in on your goals, asking about your progress or hopefully they are providing constructive criticism and supporting you in removing blockers. So a governance board could also be thought about in, in that way adding that account aspect for you. And in our discovery programs, this is a slide you've seen from Tenda already. I've just highlighted the three areas where we've actually put in place where you should be meeting with your governance board or your leadership. So there's some infrastructure there to help you know when you should have those check ins to help you with that. In addition, the discovery program or any of those programs also have dashboards to help you understand the progress and help the governance body as well understand the the progress. So how is team one doing? Where are they getting stuck? Where are they spending their time even? What is the mood like for the team? What does their testing activity look like? And then we also have a scorecard and I think there were a few questions there around metrics and how do you actually assess what you need to do? And I think that's something we'll spend more time on in a future webinar. But this scorecard is something that teams can use. It's also in the program and on our website to help you assess where you're at, where how much confidence you have in the different areas, desirability, viability, feasibility, adaptability. And it helps the governance board also to provide you with feedback and make evidence based decisions as well. So all of that is just to say that the best way to start is really to get started. So quit talking about it and just, just get on with it. Right. And so final question for you before we kind of move into the Q and A is what are you going to do now to make progress with your 2025 innovation? Go.