Management Innovation
This is the eighth in a series of articles about the management function. In previous articles Pat Sheridan has covered the basics of planning, organising, controlling, motivation and leadership. All such management actions are important and contribute to some point on a ‘success to failure’ scale in relation to specific objectives. Likewise, each manager’s particular style also impacts on this success to failure scale. Apart from a structured approach to the core management ingredients (i.e. plan, organise, control and motivation), each manager has an individual style or approach to leadership and also to their efforts to be innovative. Some managers take innovation very seriously as a necessary aspect of their working week.
Introduction
As mentioned in earlier articles, a plan is not a completely fixed set of details. Sometimes internal or external changes, or a combination of both, impact on the original plan, causing anything from minor to major changes as the situation demands.
Management’s ability to respond to such change is a critical need for the business and can make the difference between success and failure. There are good managers and there are others who are not quite so good. However, this latter group may be able to improve as we shall see later in this article.
The manager who makes the best contribution to a successful business intervention when things have begun to go wrong is generally perceived as the hero of the day and reaps the rewards of recognition and financial and career progression. What is this special ingredient or combination of ingredients which drives such successful intervention and which some managers display more often than others? Is it pure intellectual capacity? A creative talent? Or just an ability to take risks without any fear and sometimes based only on a hunch, without too much detailed substance to back it up?
All of the foregoing is linked to success and oscillates from company to company and from manager to manager. It is somewhat dependant on circumstances and often on a bit of luck as well. You know the expression ‘being in the right place at the right time’? Well it often appears to be a fact and yet why is it that some people seem to be in that position more often than others? Is their karma better than yours or do they just try harder for longer? You have also heard the expression ‘he was an overnight success’, but not mentioned is that it may have taken twenty years of hard work and failure for him to achieve that success.
These are perfectly legitimate observations on the occurrences of success, and yet there are deliberate actions which managers can take which can support and accelerate the development of positive interventions in all circumstances and improve their chances of successful intervention on a more regular basis.
Before looking at the process of taking ‘corrective’ action, which hopefully will lead on to a successful intervention, let us consider how circumstances or challenges demand the need for rapid and effective response.
The Challenges
It is rare that managers establish a detailed plan which maintains its core objectives and viability throughout the year. Some managers seem to love the constant challenges while others suffer from them. There are an infinite number of potential occurrences in most businesses which necessitate deviation from the planned route. For example:
- The key leader or a key employee, resigns, retires or joins a competitor.
- The company’s best customer goes out of business, changes to a new supplier or out-sources its manufacturing to China for example, or relocates to another country.
- New competitors enter the market with an excellent product which is cheaper and there is very little time to think and react.
- Legislation requires the product to be redesigned or to implement significant procedural changes to the process requiring investment, time and training, thereby increases costs.
- Company premises damaged by fire, staff are injured or killed, the plant or premises is rendered useless.
- A major planned improvement fails to take a critical factor into account and the company wastes massive funds and positions itself out of the market until further changes are developed and introduced.
- There is a major dispute concerning a dismissal, wage rates or new practices which stops all work and a picket prevents supplier’s deliveries.
- Sophisticated equipment breaks down involving a long shut down for maintenance during a critical product run for a key client.
As demonstrated above the list can be infinite and the challenges can range from minor to critical.
Being prepared is an excellent philosophy and anticipation is an important ingredient which aids preparedness. However, people are never fully prepared for every eventuality and surprise, panic and shock are also normal characteristics for people in work and life situations. This often results in poor analysis and poor decision-making.
Despite the fact that terrorism is a fact of life, and that governments are aware and are observing the signs related to natural disasters and are somewhat ready with contingency plans, the likes of the 9/11 attack and the devastation cause by a hurricane or tsunami still occur with minimum warning and minimum opportunity to take corrective action. The only thing left to be done is to mourn, clean up, remember and try to be better prepared to avoid the issue or the resulting fallout the next time round.
Approaches
Avoidance and minimising adverse affects are two different approaches, each one suited to different circumstances. For example, many natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods and tornados cannot be avoided but procedural responses, such as early warning systems, can reduce the risks, costs and fatalities.
So, one approach is to accept the fact that something major will go wrong and have contingency arrangements in place to minimise the negative impact.
The other approach is prevention. For example, create constant monitoring and control mechanisms to avoid the occurrence. This is impossible for natural phenomena but possible for many business applications, particularly with regard to processes.
The assumption that some event will happen followed by a detailed and planned intervention is at least better than allowing the action to occur and trying during the occurrence to bring about a successful intervention.
For example, the trained anti-terrorist personnel, currently accompanying US air flights, provides no guarantee that a terrorist will not be able to take control of an aircraft, but the probability is greatly reduced. This action was spawned by a terrible and almost unimaginable act by terrorists, which we commonly refer to as 9/11. In business we may have lesser shocks but the aftermath can mean serious losses and sometimes closure for companies with dramatic loss of jobs (particularly devastating to small communities).
Preparedness
A deliberate effort, to design and implement a successful intervention, begins with thinking. This can be an individual action or a group action. It is a deliberate effort to be creative, to come up with as near to a ‘failsafe’ solution as possible.
This process involves:
- An assessment of the potential.
- An attempt to define possibility and probability.
- The development of a range of solution options.
- The rating of each option in terms of ‘what if’.
- Arriving at agreed selections of best possible response to eliminate or significantly reduce the risk.
- Implementation.
The process seems straightforward, logical and easy to follow. Yet, there are many occasions when we hold our head in our hands and say ‘why didn’t I see that coming’ or ‘I could have done this or that to avoid the mess’. So everything begins with at least the effort to think and anticipate. The very act of beginning this process should automatically shift us to move forward through each consecutive step.
So why is it that we fail to think and plan sometimes? One of the most common explanations provided is that ‘I hadn’t got the time’ or ‘I was so busy getting the job done that I did not have the luxury of sitting down to think’.
Humans are the only creatures on the planet which can consider and act on complex and multifaceted issues, make sense of them and develop a range of interrelated responses to ensure a particular result.
The brain is the most extraordinary organ in our known universe and yet we fail to set a regular period aside to use its extraordinary power specifically to be innovative.
Many of you will say that you do use your brains to assess and rationalise on issues and that you have regular weekly and/or monthly meetings at which all managers debate where things are at and make decisions to act on the integrated thinking and decision making of the group.
It is very likely that we have all been to boring meetings right? Well, perhaps many meetings are more boring than successful in terms of achievement and innovation. Undoubtedly, in many cases some meetings are useful, however, it is often the case that management meetings follow a political path, mapped out by the chairman or managing director, rather than trying to establish a genuine environment of openness and creativity; a deliberate period of freedom for all to think laterally, to propose, analyse, debate and experiment with new ideas.
The expression ‘think outside the box’ which has probably lost its real meaning by now, suggests that we humans are predominantly forced, during our daily working lives to think within a box, i.e., within a defined and restricted range of parameters.
Therefore anyone who comes up with a different or novel view might find themselves laughed at or ridiculed and even sidelined as being a bit eccentric. When Brody Sweeney decided to open the first O’Brien’s Sandwich Bar I am sure that bank managers or other potential investors explained with a knowing smile that since Lord Sandwich first invented that handy item that most countries had embraced the concept and that it really was no longer a novel idea.
However, a slight variation on a theme can inject a whole new perspective making it more attractive and useful - a successful intervention. It worked, he made substantial money and the business continues to thrive.
To get back to the management meetings, the all-important agenda maps out the key matters to be discussed and there at the bottom of the page is the usual catch-all phrase ‘any other business’.
This is usually at the end of the meeting and the chairman sometimes asks the question in a way which succeeds in telling the participants there is not going to be any other business; that business is, in fact, complete. This is often asked as he or she is gathering up the documents and returning them to the briefcase.
The term ‘any other business’ should mean ‘what is says on the tin’, the opportunity for creativity and fun, enriching challenge, participation, motivation, stimulating debate and inspiring interactions. A good leader knows the values associated with establishing a genuine creative environment.
Conclusion
All leaders and managers should be given training in innovative processes. Leaders should be the first to understand the various aspects of innovation and the values to be gained from deliberate pursuit of creativity in their company.
Leaders should establish the creative thinking environment and lead by example. The leaders should also drive the managers to learn the same values and implement creative thinking periods for all meetings.
The Japanese did it after the last war. They made deliberate efforts to capitalise on the brain power at all levels in their companies and introduced millions of incremental changes, sometimes tiny in nature, to work practices, manufacturing equipment and their products which provided them with the ability to grow and compete in the global markets.
There was a time, as recently as the sixties, when Japanese products were scorned as cheap eastern rubbish. Today, less than fifty years later their general engineering and electronics products are second to none and they have a thriving economy. Their car engines are now probably the most reliable in the world.
For leaders and managers the most important ingredient of this whole creativity and change process is to ensure that all the participants really believe that it is all right to contribute no matter how wild a notion (the wild notions are often the ones to break traditional and locked-in thinking); that it will have no adverse affects on them and that the act itself is fun; that the results can possibly be extraordinary.
The individuals contributing creative thinking deserve respect and appreciation even when the results do not seem great. The process is on-going and it will sooner or later bring positive results. Training in creative thinking techniques and processes will help. Remember the next ‘big thing’ which we will all desire to own and use will arise from a creative idea backed by good business management.
