Technology Innovation vs. Insubordination

You have been hard at work on your latest technology innovation. This innovation can take your organization to a higher level of profitability or streamlined operation. You've been successfully making your case for your innovation across departmental and hierarchical lines. But there are obstacles in your way:

- your boss doesn't believe your innovation can actually work
- there is no room in the budget to accommodate your innovation in the short term
- your innovation would open up new lines of business, but your organization's senior executives will not examine a relationship between a technology component and a profit potential of these lines of business

You truly and strongly believe that your innovation can take your organization higher, but the obstacles remain. You take all of the "believe in yourself" advice to heart in order to "hang in there", but the frustration continues to mount. The message of innovation can be tough to deliver to, and be accepted by an organization. On the surface, it can actually appear to be insubordination if your innovation is not part of the "master plan" in the minds of your organization's management.

Before your frustration bubbles over, you may want to consider these points:

- Understand your organization's short-term goals
For the next three or six months, your organization might not have the capacity to handle your innovation. There may be a critical window for your organization to focus on what it is doing right now, and what it plans to do in the short-term. You must exhibit an understanding and acknowledgment of your organization's situation and direction, otherwise a perception of aimless wandering regarding your ideas may result.

- Understand the current climate
You don't really feel the below-freezing temperatures when you are wearing seven sweaters - cut through the layers and get in touch. Who really holds the influence cards in your organization? Where exactly is your organization feeling the pressure that your innovation might relieve? Are there any factors outside the organization responsible for this pressure? And how much do you really know about them? Find out!

- Understand and believe in your organization's long-term goals
You are part of your organization because you want the organization to succeed in its goals, yes? If you ask yourself this question, and any part of the answer resonates "no", then you have an internal conflict of interest that no amount of innovation (or insubordination, for that matter) can overcome. You will need to reevaluate whether your goals for seeing your innovation put in play are in alignment with your organization's goals after all.

- Believe in yourself via persistence, not arrogance
Continue to make your case, but back it up with tangible benefits that can be sold across your organization. Exactly where and how will your innovation help your organization's people to complete your organization's goals? If you can state the costs and benefits of your innovation with equal and increasingly strong precision, you can avoid the far less convincing "I'm just right about this" and "Trust me" selling tactics.

When you can understand and accept the above, you know that you will need to take your mounting frustration to task, and focus on finding ways to work with or remove the obstacles in your way. You then can work towards a realized innovation and avoid an insubordinate situation that may not be necessary.

One exception to the above: emergency or crisis of organizational survival. There's nothing like a true survival emergency for an organization to consider ANY idea, no matter how far afield the idea lies. If a true crisis like this exists in your organization, and your organization's culture opens up its pathways of reception, you can go for the straight sell of your innovation. What may be perceived as insubordination at the outset can be forgiven, just as long as your organization weathers the crisis using your innovation, and of course, you are right about the results.

The Exception-Tolerant Organization - Part 5

As explained in my introductory post on the Exception-Tolerant Organization, ETOs do not tolerate waste, stifling of innovation, or inflexibility. These are the corrosive agents that prevent an organization from smoothly handling exceptions, maintaining a competitive edge, and operating effectively.

When I was at IBM Research I knew of a research Fellow who would monitor the keystrokes made by his administrative assistants while they were typing, and would spend quite a bit of time with them working on utilizing the fewest keystrokes possible. This is intolerance of waste taken to the extreme, where a few burning trees are saved while sacrificing the forest. Although it is quite easy to disdain waste made at this low level, this is not the kind of intolerance we are discussing here.

While the canonical definition of waste is anything that does not add value, what exactly constitutes waste for the Exception-Tolerant Organization? As previous posts have mentioned, exceptions happen to organizations, to customers, and to people every single day. Those organizations that cannot handle the exceptions and improve from them will fight a constant perception of lower value in the eyes of their customers.

For those who understand the benefits of mapping a value stream, waste would be anything that slows the velocity of movement through the value stream. The inability to swiftly handle exceptions can bring this velocity down to near zero. Being Exception-Tolerant can keep the value stream moving at the pace of innovation.

Waste for the ETO, then, is the set of roadblocks to handling exceptions: inflexibility combined with the stifling of innovation.

Inflexibility is tough to exhibit while being Exception-Tolerant, but is even tougher to recognize in an Exception-Intolerant organization. After all, there are certainly industries and products where strict and rigid standards must be constantly and consistently adhered to (watch-making, food preparation, chip manufacturing, aerospace), but these should not be mistaken for inflexibility. Chip manufacturers, despite adhering to the use of 30+ year old computer code, have been able to find avenues of flexibility in many ways over the past few years - from lower-voltage conduits to hyper-threading to multi-core pipelines.

Stifling of innovation is perhaps the touchiest subject when it comes to organizations who may be looking to become Exception-Tolerant. The urge to suppress innovation is strong in risk-averse environments, and is often exercised in such forms as:

- the boss consistently saying "No"
- a departmental control group demanding that a potential innovative division look and operate the exact same way as the existing divisions
- new ideas whose implementations are unduly laden with process, direct-to-archive documentation, or extreme executive input

The stifling of innovation is often a by-product of culture, and the effects may not be felt in world markets until long after the key culture-makers have moved on. Strong cultures that stifle innovation are not often discovered by the outside until the effect in the marketplace becomes obvious. ETOs, even ones with strict standards, have a tough time saying "No". Inflexible organizations find it all too easy to say "No" and close doors on new ideas and customer needs by stifling innovation.

But with all the good work that we as people do, and all the work that we endeavor to do, how do we let ourselves get into a mode of inflexibility and resistance to innovation? The hard truth here is that we most often become inflexible and stifle innovation when we put self-interests above working together as a team. There is good reason that this struggle is often labeled as the war within.

But the other side of this hard truth is that ETOs are given credit by their customers for handling the exceptions and increasing the overall value proposition. And when credit is given in this fashion, ETOs give their people, who have worked together as a team, every opportunity to take the credit and reap the rewards - thus making team achievement in the best self-interest.

Act Like An Owner

Does your organization ask you to act, and think, like an owner? Does your organization ask this of you when you come aboard?

What would an Owner do in your organization? Would an Owner carry a vision? Innovate? Seek improvement and new opportunities?

Would an Owner cut corners? Cut costs? Maintain the status quo?

Would only an Owner understand the key drivers to the business? Or could anyone else in the organization achieve such an understanding?

Does your organization educate and allow you to understand the key drivers to its business?

Does your organization allow you to cut corners and costs? To maintain the status quo?

Does your organization allow you to carry a vision? Innovate? Seek improvement and new opportunities?

Your organization may ask you to act like an owner - but does it allow it?