innovation culture

Mar 21, 2017

How a hackathon can encourage your employees to innovate

Group Of Multi-Ethnic People Working On Digital Devices Around Table

Originally published on March 16, 2017 as a Guest Column in The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-managing/hackathons-arent-just-for-hackers-any-more/article34146640/ 

Everyone in business has heard the expression that if you’re not disrupting your market, someone else will soon be disrupting you. But this raw challenge doesn’t help most leaders understand how they’re supposed to get started in the creative-destruction business.

But Steven Stein has figured it out. The chief executive officer of Toronto-based Multi-Health Systems Inc. has created an in-house “hackathon” to encourage innovative thinking and transform ideas into new products.

Stein is a true believer in creative destruction. He founded MHS 33 years ago to disrupt the psychological-testing industry by automating conventional paper-based tests for the personal computer. Today, MHS is a global industry leader, with 160 employees and clients in more than 75 countries. But Stein knows his company remains vulnerable to new entrepreneurs with better ideas – so he’s shaking up his team to ensure they develop those bold new products first.

It was an off-site strategy session for senior leaders that launched MHS’s innovation project. “Two years back, we had a presentation on disruption,” Stein said. “We went home and had nightmares about how new people could kick us out of the market.”

Stein and his team knew hackathons were popular, if sometimes messy, events that help small teams turn new ideas into working prototypes fast. Even when they don’t produce new products, hackathons can be powerful problem-solving exercises that can build positive attributes such as agility, risk tolerance and trust. So Stein appointed a team, led by president Hazel Wheldon, in the summer of 2015 to put MHS on the hackathon circuit – and make it fun and engaging.

Since then, MHS has held two hackathons at its Toronto headquarters, and created a five-person “innovation hub” to select the best ideas and turn them into customer-ready products. Innovation is a long game, and the first market tests are still in the field. But Stein believes the process has already been successful. “The biggest benefit is the excitement it created,” he said. “People loved working with new people. It’s been worth it just for the engagement, not just the products we got out of it.”

Could your company pull off a similar innovation coup? Here’s how MHS did it.

  • After researching how other companies managed innovation events, MHS’s hackathon planners developed guidelines and rules. They decided on a one-day hackathon on a January Monday – with the 15 teams competing in a “Demo Day” the following Friday, in conjunction with MHS’s annual awards dinner.
  • Teams formed in groups of five to eight in early fall, so they would have lots of time to develop ideas and research solutions prior to the big day. To help the teams focus, planners identified four sectors as most likely to be disrupted: big data; mobile apps; gamification; and process improvement.
  • As the employee teams took shape (each one restricted to one programmer and one employee from user experience), the planners scheduled a series of “lunch and learns” through the fall. Topics included creating prototypes, writing business plans and making killer presentations.
  • The incentives? The team with the most promising idea (as judged by Stein and a panel of internal and external judges) would win $5,000. There would also be a $2,000 second prize, and a third prize of $1,000.

On hackathon day in January, 2016, the 15 teams had until 6 p.m. to finalize a prototype and hammer out a business plan. MHS supplied food and colour-coded team T-shirts, creating a festive atmosphere. Participants were laughing, sweating, debating and tweeting – so much so that competitors started noticing. For 2017, MHS had to say no to tweets that gave too much away.

All teams presented to the judging panel on the following Friday. Each team was allowed a five-minute presentation, followed by five minutes for answering questions. Stein was thrilled by the winning ideas: an inexpensive “candidate competencies” test for employers to help MHS hack its way into a highly lucrative market; a mobile “early warning” solution that let psychologists share with patients (or their parents) preliminary test results in minutes instead of weeks; and the identification of new markets for some of the firm’s underused mental-health surveys through sales to the insurance industry.

Stein said some of these ideas might have daunted the team prior to the hackathon. “But now these guys have mapped them out. They said: ‘We can do it. Here’s how.’ ”

The next step was for the implementation team to review the finalists’ ideas and adopt the most promising projects. For now, MHS is funding this project through unbudgeted foreign-exchange gains; Stein hopes the group will start paying its way before the Canadian dollar turns up again.

The innovation hub – two psychologists, two programmers and a UX person – fine-tuned initial prototypes for hand-off to sales, which arranged pilot programs with real customers. The team set itself quarterly goals to ensure it was doing its job; in innovation, knowing what to stop working on is just as important as spotting winners.

“Over all, there are eight or nine projects we’re moving ahead with,” Stein said. With two hackathons now under his belt, a pipeline of new projects and a re-engaged work force, he said the whole process has been a winner. “It’s turned us from a disruptee to a disruptor.”

Ken Tencer is chief executive officer of design-driven strategy firm Spyder Works Inc. and the co-author of two books on innovation, including the bestseller Cause a Disturbance. He holds the Institute of Corporate Directors certification (ICD.D). Follow him on Twitter at @90percentRule.

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Category: Blog, Business, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Event, Icicle, Innovation, Intrapreneurship, Marketing, Spyder Works

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Mar 1, 2016

Putting people into a room together doesn’t make them a team

Originally published on February 1, 2016 as a Guest Column in The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-managing/putting-people-into-a-room-together-doesnt-make-them-a-team/article28439210/

Sometimes the simplest insights are the most telling. And the most important.

Some time back, while I was working with an engineering client, our conversation circled back to his firm’s past attempts to encourage collaboration and innovation. In one sentence, he crystallized the challenge many of my clients have encountered in their attempts to change their corporate culture: “Just because you put us into a room together doesn’t make us a team.”

In a previous innovation exercise, his firm had taken steps towards creating its first cross-functional team, a popular tool for accelerated innovation. This “task force” model draws people from different areas of the organization – sales, marketing, HR, admin, research and development, and so on – to generate insights from all points of view, from customer needs to new product ideas, production and distribution. Theoretically, these teams can move forward fast, because they don’t have to wait for feedback or permissions from other departments. But this firm’s initial results with a cross-functional team were less than stellar.

Why? Because without a leader and a conductor who can provide the big picture and co-ordinate all of the players, you’re asking your people to work outside of what they know and do every day. Understanding how everything fits together isn’t a part of their job descriptions.

In addition to technical know-how, teams need strong leadership, direction, objectives and accountability (at minimum) if they want to be successful. As my client noted, these skills aren’t often taught in schools. His staff needed additional training to ensure that they could translate their business skills or technical brilliance into a team dynamic where the whole could truly be greater than the sum of its parts.

At my firm, we call this process transitioning the cross-functional team into a Dynamic Working Group (DWG). The purpose of the DWG is to create an environment in which high-functioning individuals are taught collaborative skills to help them work together to deliver productive, measurable outcomes.

Based on my facilitation of working groups within client teams, I can share some of the insights I’ve gleaned about successful collaboration and how to get everyone pulling together.

1. Leadership for performance: People don’t respond well to an inflexible “boss.” They are more successful when their leader attracts commitment and energizes people by creating meaning in their work. When the leader’s focus is truly on partnering with their team members to drive performance, leveraging frequency and quality of conversation, employees are more likely to commit to the goals at hand.

2. Discovering everyone’s strengths: There are benefits in building diverse teams of individuals drawn from different backgrounds with a range of skills, experiences and perspectives. Collectively, they represent your company’s DNA. The leader’s challenge is to take the time to understand and tap into the individual strengths of each team member.

3. Objectives and accountability: Successful businesses set objectives that are company-wide. Without objectives, a company lacks purpose. But simply setting business objectives is not enough. They need to be achievable, inspiring, easy to visualize and people must be held accountable for achieving them. If objectives are not aligned to a common strategic direction, then everyone in the organization will be working at cross purposes – leading to conflict, project slowdowns and reduced commitment to achieving results.

4. Meaningful meetings: In many organizations, meetings are taking up an ever-increasing amount of time. When meetings are held without preparation, agendas and action items, or used as a stalling tactic for decision-making, they diminish productivity and morale. Given the high number of people who normally attend cross-functional team meetings, strong leadership and a sense of purpose are essential.

To drive innovation and meaningful change in your organization, you need confident, vigorous cross-functional teams. Sustained innovation success depends on having team leaders who understand the big picture, relate well to individuals from different backgrounds, and have the communication skills to galvanize and inspire.

First you bring people together in the same room, and then you bring them together on the same page.

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Feb 16, 2016

Why your company is failing to innovate

Originally published on December 4, 2015 as a Guest Column in The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/why-your-company-is-failing-to-innovate/article27510973/

An executive recently said to me: “Our company has become very innovative. We have hundreds of ideas that we have analyzed and know are right for our future. We just haven’t been able to bring them to market yet.”

Strike one, strike two and strike three. This executive doesn’t know any more about innovation than he knows about hitting a 100-mph fastball.

Innovation is not simply about having an idea. It’s about commercializing ideas: Bringing them to market in ways that benefit your company and your customers. Having an idea may be insightful or even creative, but it certainly doesn’t make you innovative.

It shouldn’t be this hard. What could be simpler than having an idea and acting on it?

But according to Forbes magazine, it’s just not that simple. In a February, 2015, article entitled “Why U.S. Firms Are Dying: Failure To Innovate,” Steve Denning writes: “A new survey from MindMatters conducted this month suggests that many American companies are still in an ‘innovation crisis.’ ”

In the survey Denning cites, “only 5 per cent of respondents report that workers in innovation programs feel highly motivated to innovate. More than three of four say their new ideas are poorly reviewed and analyzed. And less than a third of the firms surveyed say they regularly measure or report on innovation.”

In my work with large and small companies, across many industries and countries, there seems to be three common and significant barriers to success.

The first barrier is transparency

We are better at hiding our ideas than bringing them to market. We write them on sticky notes, scrawl them on loose pieces of paper, or input them into notes apps on our phones – and then forget all about them. To be an effective innovator, you need inclusive transparency. You need to solicit ideas from your team and post them in a visible place in your office, along with the criteria used to judge them, identification of the leader tasked with bringing each project to market and the progress of each project. With this approach, innovation is an open-and-shared process, with consistent measurement and reporting.

The second barrier is improper resource allocation

Mr. Denning’s articles also reports: “More than four of five respondents (81 per cent) say their firms do not have the resources needed to fully pursue the innovations and new ideas capable of keeping their companies ahead in the competitive global marketplace.” Don’t overpromise. If you have resources to achieve just two projects, choose the best two and commit to them. Too many companies bite off more than they can chew. Trying to do too much usually produces nothing – other than creating one more perceived failure in your organization.

The third barrier is the lack of an innovation culture

Innovation may depend upon the activation of market-ready ideas, but it is driven by organizational attitude. Successful corporations today need an innovation culture that inspires people to seek new possibilities and embrace change in their day-to-day work. As Mr. Denning notes: “The challenge is systemic: While more than half the respondents (55 per cent) say that their organizations treat intellectual property as a valuable resource, only one in seven (16 per cent) believed their employers regarded its development as a mission-critical function. The lack of recognition for contributions to innovation is also striking: Almost half (49 per cent) believe they won’t receive any benefit or recognition for developing successful ideas.”

Don’t expect your team to act on new ideas in their spare time. It sends the message that innovation is a hobby, not a commitment. To achieve breakthroughs, you need to carve time out of your team’s workweek to devote to new projects and directions. (Google famously gives its best engineers a day a week to work on innovation ideas of their own creation.)

Your employees’ innovation successes also need to be recognized, both publicly and at their next performance review. There is nothing better than a public thank you – except maybe a share of the profits – to make people feel appreciated. These moves also reconfirm the organization’s recognition that its own people are the source of future success.

Innovation isn’t an idea on the back of a napkin; it’s a framework of resources and rewards that focuses your entire team on ideation, experimentation and product-market fit. A shared innovation agenda gives your organization greater ability to grow revenue, control costs and engage entire teams. Innovation also improves the customer experience, through the continuous introduction of new and improved product offers and services.

When the innovation process is shared and understood, there’s no more expecting unprepared batters to hit fastballs. When it comes to innovation, it takes a team to hit the ball out of the park.

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