Disarm roadblocks on the path to creativity.
By Lisa Hochgraf
It turns out that innovation isn’t just about coming up with some new ideas. It’s also about forging a path to their success. That means selling them to the decision-makers and—long term—developing a culture that truly embraces trying something new.
Neal Thornberry, Ph.D., is an innovation expert who advises not letting organizational “wackiness” kill great ideas.
“Organizational design wackiness is not usually generated on purpose or with malice; instead it usually develops over time and starts out with the best of intentions,” writes Thornberry in his book, Innovation Judo: Disarming Roadblocks and Blockheads on the Path to Creativity. If the unintended consequences of wackiness “are not monitored and modified, then the wackiness factor grows.”
Faculty director for innovation initiatives at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Executive Education, Monterey, Calif., Thornberry cites the following example of organizational wackiness: “
All organizations need financial control systems, but when the finance people produce so many forms and reporting requirements that it takes away from selling the product, then this is wackiness.”
To combat the sort of wackiness that gets in the way of implementing new and useful ideas, Thornberry offers seven principles of “innovation judo” in his book. One of these is leverage—the kind of influence that paying customers have with an organization.
It’s valuable, he explains, to know “how to use the customer to your advantage should you encounter innovation killers,” such as risk aversion, micromanaging executives, too stringent organizational structure and processes, silo mentality, and legal constraints.
IT executives can play a key role in performing “innovation judo”—at least in the sense of helping to bring together good but disparate ideas into an organizational technology vision that’s greater than its parts, suggests this Q&A with MIT professor Jeanne Ross, Ph.D. “
A CIO has the perspective that usually nobody else in the company has,” writes Ross, director and principal research scientist with MIT’s Sloan School of Business’ Center for Information Systems Research. “All these people have come to the CIO and said, ‘I need to do this. I need to do this.’ After a while, the CIO is saying, ‘Wow, you know what? If I do what everyone asks, it actually isn't going to work together, and it needs to.’
"The two people who made the requests don't have a clue…, because their function in the organization has been specified," continues Ross, who’s also on the faculty of CUES’ Strategic Innovation Institute I. "They go to optimize their function or their business unit, or their product line, whatever the case may be, whereas the CIO, who's getting all these requests, is saying, ‘My goodness. There are all kinds of synergy this company is missing.’
The great CIOs step forward and say, ‘... You're missing the opportunities here. And we can deliver something more valuable.'”
CUES member Bruce Fafard, a graduate of Strategic Innovation institute I, hosted by MIT, says the program helps credit unions learn how to build organizational capacity for continuous innovation.
“The power of the tools learned at Strategic Innovation Institute comes in bringing discipline and a framework to the thought process, giving us a guided process to go through, to get tangible results,” says Fafard, president/CEO of $494 million 121 Financial Credit Union, Jacksonville, Fla.
What innovation judo do you perform at your credit union to help innovation occur? Please tell us about it in the comments.
Lisa Hochgraf is a CUES senior editor.
Read about how a board can help set a credit union’s innovation vision. Learn about managing complexity and developing change agents when you attend Strategic Innovation Institute I, hosted by MIT, Sept. 20-25. Registration includes a copy of The Future of Payment: Scenarios for Credit Unions 2018, a $395 value.
