Rewarding Innovation: Because Great Ideas Just Don’t Imagine Themselves

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An engineer friend of mine works for a large, highly innovative company. You know the type of company I’m talking about: the kind that introduces new products, offers unique services, and establishes effective processes with remarkable consistency. The kind of company whose employees get told over and over again, “You’re so lucky!”

But here’s the secret: luck has nothing to do with it. And here’s why:

Innovative companies, like my friend’s company, take creativity very seriously. Innovation isn’t an end result (for example, a successful product), it’s a plan of action, a series of concrete activities — including false starts — just enough of which lead to successful products.

For example, engineers at my friend’s company must set specific performance targets each quarter. Innovation points are an important element of these targets. Innovation points are earned based on specific actions, including coming up with ideas, testing the concepts, taking the approved concept forward to the patent stage, and developing a marketable product. Coming up with an idea and presenting it to an innovation review team is worth a $200 bonus.  If the idea goes forward beyond the initial concept, the employees earn $2,000. Not every idea is a winner, but the program stimulates enough profitable creativity to justify the investment.

This program got me thinking and searching. There are many, many public innovation awards, but I wonder, how common are internal innovation awards? How much innovation would we see if such programs were used more frequently?

Here are my questions for you:

  • What are you already doing to inspire and reward innovation in your company?
  • What might you begin doing, starting tomorrow, to inspire and reward innovation in your company?

 

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

What Is Our Leadership Role In Service Recovery?

I recently had a small remodeling job in my home that, despite excellent intentions on the part of the provider, did not go well. This project failure got me thinking about service recovery and what exactly that means. I have also come to realize that the definition may be different, depending on whether you sit on the customer side or on the provider side. After all, where we stand is always based on where we sit.

Most of us, as leaders, focus our attention on getting things done right the first time. In manufacturing, error rates are measured down to the level of “six sigma”. While excellence in delivery is an appropriate goal for high performing companies, even high performing companies make mistakes. And for me, true excellence is reflected in what happens next. In short, true excellence shows up when service recovery is required.

In my experience, what the customer wants falls into two parts, acknowledgement of the error and assurance that the provider will find a solution to the problem.

What often happens looks more like this…

  • Instead of acknowledging there was an error, the customer contact person seeks to explain the problem. Sometimes this effort to explain may appear to the customer as avoidance or worst case, blaming the customer.
  • Instead of seeking to find a solution to the problem, the customer contact person may simply abdicate. Sometimes, in a true effort to please the customer, the rep leaves the problem solving to the customer, and simply says, “tell me what you want and I will do it”.

Our folks who are in front of customers all the time are faced with service recovery situations frequently. Most excellent companies train their people to do it right, and employ good quality control measures to ensure this outcome. These same companies also train their people to “give good customer service” when a problem arises. As a result, when there is a small product or service failure, the contact person can successfully diffuse and handle the situation themselves. In fact, lots has been written about empowering customer facing staff to recover, and many companies employ these techniques. Examples include “try me” items at Whole Foods, to the much quoted “Ritz Carlton way”.

Sometimes though, the failure to perform is significant both in terms of dollars and customer satisfaction. It is in these situations that excellent companies have an escalation process, perhaps even a task force to resolve the situations. For me, this represents true excellence for two reasons. First, the customer feels valued and feels assured that the problem will be solved. And, equally important, the line person has support in resolving the problem.

I leave you with these two questions:

  • What is your escalation process when a significant failure to deliver happens? Are you or someone from your leadership team notified immediately?
  • Have you defined “significant” so that your line folks know the situations they can and should handle themselves and the ones that they need to escalate?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

 

Of Course I Embrace Diversity

How often do we hear people say that they embrace diversity, and then behave another way? As Ralph Waldo Emerson was fond of saying, “What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say”.

My sense is this happens because most of the time embracing diversity is easy. It’s not when folks are different from us that we are challenged, it’s when folks do something different that it becomes difficult.

As leaders, it is our job to create an environment that is accepting of everyone on the team so that the common organizational goals can be met. At the same time, in these polarized times, leaders are increasingly finding team members looking for those “doing differences” rather than looking for what they share simply by virtue of being human.

The questions that come to mind for me are:

  • how do we both set aside our differences, and at the same time embrace them, so that our organizations benefit from the broader thinking that diversity brings?
  • how do we know when to confront behavior that seems in conflict with our stated goals, or when to leave it be, because the behavior is simply based on life differences rather true conflict?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain