"After finally experiencing the law of diminishing returns on efficiency improvements, many companies are now placing innovation as a top priority. Innovation requires a different environment and a different culture; most companies will require an extreme makeover in order to be successful," asserts the Cutter Business Technology Council in a new Council Opinion written by Cutter Consortium Fellow, Christine Davis along with Cutter Consortium Fellows, Dr. Robert D. Austin, Lynne Ellyn, Jim Highsmith, Ken Orr, Tim Lister and Tom DeMarco.
"For the past 15 years, operational excellence has been the management mantra; operational excellence is expected, just like quality. Now, the new cry is for innovation, creativity, the 'wow' factor! However, this requires a real shift in the value system and the basic business culture that have been nurtured to support the quality and operational excellence movements," says Davis.
Changing a culture to support innovation takes time and requires all the executive leadership to be enrolled as a change agent. Consistency and reinforcement through the ranks is the only way to succeed. And more than likely, management changes will be necessary because some people cannot operate unless they have total control. The CIO and other executives will have to make some tough people decisions.
Davis offers four recommendations:
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Create an IT innovation idea budget. Appropriate a real budgeting line for IT R&D to be used to fund multiple idea projects. Solicit your business marketing organization for funding, and jointly own and sponsor idea projects. Recognize and reward those who submit idea project proposals. Celebrate both the successes and failures of these projects because of the learning and innovation.
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Review all current practices to see if unnecessary controls are in place, especially unwritten practices. For example, is there an unwritten "closed door" policy in which it is not appropriate for employees to just drop by each others' offices without an appointment arranged by an administrative assistant? If so, create an "open door" policy, which means that management and employees doors are always open and interruptions tolerated. This will require trust. A trust that people are not going to waste each others' time and that everyone is important and valuable.
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Consider creating a job position(s) for IT Expert or Entrepreneur that is able to work as an independent agent with the businesses.
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Focus on decreasing the time to market through setting aggressive IT product development time reduction goals. Adopt and promote agile development methods more aggressively to help realize these goals.
Jim Highsmith concurs with Davis and offers one additional recommendation: "Devise a performance measuring system that places significant emphasis on innovation and customer value and less emphasis on schedule and cost. Be careful in interpreting this recommendation. It does not say to put no emphasis on schedule and cost, it says put less emphasis on them. In an interesting twist, when these two dimensions are de-emphasized, their performance often improves."
Tim Lister adds, "We need to take the lead in offering innovative solutions, not just follow the requests of our stakeholders. Great systems come from a synergy of business purpose or need and from available technology. The IT side of the house has the window on the world of technology, and as such, must be at the forefront of understanding its capabilities. IT needs to bring in new technology to experiment with and, maybe, if all goes well, to offer new products and services with it. If all does not pan out, then IT needs to move onto another trial. Experimentation is everything. IT needs to start projects for the organization; it cannot wait for a sponsor to fund IT technology research."
Tom DeMarco concludes the Council Opinion with, "Let's get real. Innovation takes time, and nobody's got time to do it. The people who are capable of innovating are busy covering the jobs of the other people who were let go to save cost. Busy organizations are busy doing regular work and have no time for anything inventive. The price we pay for all the "efficiency" achieved over the last six or eight years is that the innovation capacity has been ruthlessly cut. I put "efficiency" in quotes because that's not really what it is. The cost savings our organizations have apparently realized by trimming staff have been offset by work funded out of the hide of their workers. Innovation is a core necessity, so the short-term gain of working the workforce harder comes at the price of the future. Companies that are now celebrating that they have become Lean and Mean will eventually learn that what they have really become is Takeover Bait."
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