Bringing Innovation at Work Place

I have analyzed hundreds of Customer Satisfaction Survey results in my career. I find a common theme in most of the feedback: - that is lack of Innovation. Customers appreciate good work. If you keep on delivering good work consistently, it is quite natural that the customer will get used to it. Many times, even after consistently meeting performance requirements of the work, the Customer Satisfaction Index starts declining. The customer expects more and more compared to what you have been delivering. Meeting requirements become stale. How do we manage customer expectation in such situation? Among the many solutions, “Innovation” is the most important.

I have discussed this issue with many people. Everyone talks about Innovation. Generally, teams or companies differentiate themselves on the “How” part. Knowing the problem is a no brainer; knowing the solution isn’t! I will discuss some simple steps to introduce a culture of Innovation. The method suggested is not exhaustive; it is just an indicative one. One can find out thousands of other ways to bring innovation in his/her environment. Let us keep in mind; only simple methods work.

Before I talk about the prescription, let me take you to the period of the World Wars. History teaches us that innovation, in technology and battle techniques, took place when we were fighting wars. This clearly indicates the mankind has been forced to innovate when survival was at stake. Extending this logic, if we can create a culture which puts demands on individuals; individuals will respond to the demand positively.

I have led many teams of Kaizen and Value Engineering in my life. Let me take a situation. A Kaizen team picks up a problem. It is an informal small group. They brainstorm on the solutions and come up with small improvements. One of the principles of brainstorming is to generate maximum number of suggestions/ solutions without bothering about the quality of the solution. Once the idea generation engine starts working at full capacity; some excellent suggestions will come to the surface automatically. The key is to run the engine at full capacity, empower the participant. I faced a lot of resistance in the beginning in almost all cases. It takes time to pick up momentum. Once momentum picks up, it is hard to stop it. It moves in an auto pilot mode.

One can use a technique like Kaizen or Value Engineering to bring innovation or can have some methods which challenge the participants, focus them towards the goal and define some challenging goals in a short time. The group will perform. I have seen some small routine activities like “one suggestion per person per week towards improving customer’s life”, brings a huge difference in customer perception, morale of the team and project performance. It goes without saying one has to go through “The Inertia” – both static in the beginning and dynamic ones it picks up. Our task is to manage the first Inertia and leave it to auto pilot mode the second part. Naturally, we do not want to stop it.

As mentioned earlier, there could be multiple ways to bring about Innovation. I will share the well known case of Google. Everybody working for Google can work one day in a week on a subject of his or her liking. The subject should be aligned to the overall goal of the organization. This has created a huge impact in the company. The company is known for Innovation. The salient points of this program are:

• A defined method
• Resource allocation
• Empowerment
• A Discipline
• Simplicity

While designing a system, one should keep in mind the above parameters. You can start your own system; as long as it has the above ingredients, it will succeed.