Five important steps any executive should take before starting an innovation or change journey

Leaders wanting change and innovation: The common approach 

Innovation is born out of discomfort, dissatisfaction or frustration and knowing there has to be a better way. And it’s these feelings that take executive leaders down a predictable path of talking to their network who they trust to be honest, their vendors who they trust to know the technology and their competitors who they know are doing it better than them.  Next are engagements with prospective technology partners resulting in information gathering sessions to capture your business needs, a number of quotes, demos and pitches, a commitment to an investment and then the project commences. 

Risks associated with the common approach 

While that appears very logical and sensible, what is missing from that journey, is looking inside the business, understanding the cost of the problem and getting alignment across the organisation. We have often seen business leaders jumping to logical conclusions and investing in new or more technology, and after following the below steps, we uncovered the real problem was not the technology, but it was either the process, the people or the data. 

5 steps towards innovation- Important innovation steps for executives and team leaders.

1) Understand the cost of the problem

or the risk and its likely impact, until the problem is solved, ie if a particular transaction costs your business $18.00, and this transaction is undertaken 170 times a month, then the cost to the business is $36k per year. 

2) Establish and quantify the potential benefits 

of solving the problem or reducing the risk to help develop a return on investment calculation, ie if by eliminating the $18.00 transaction, you are able to reduce your client onboarding time by 5 days, and you are faster than your competitors, how much more market share can you gain? How much does that impact your reputation? 

3) Get alignment with executive and operational leadership 

to ensure solving this problem is a priority, ie are there other problems costing more to the business, or is leadership even aware this problem is impacting market share? 

4) Get resources together who understand the problem or opportunity to:

Define what success means to your business and clearly define your metrics, ie volume, client sentiment or satisfaction, efficiency or error rates? Analyse the problem or opportunity focusing on: 

• People: 

  sentiment of all stakeholders including customers, people working the current process and technology and those affected by it, and capture issues faced, skills gaps, information needs etc. 

• Process: 

  what are the processes surrounding the issue.  Are there process maps, or lists of steps in each part of the journey?  Is the client journey defined?  Are the steps in each part of a process defined and understood by each process stakeholder? 

• Technology:  

  Is the current technology stack right for the job?  If not why?  What is missing? 

• Data: 

  How old is the data? Where is it coming from? Can your data be archived? When was it last cleansed? 

5) Document your needs 

by listing what you need your solution to do capturing your people, process, technology and data, we recommend using User Stories as a simple and holistic framework. Your documentation needs to include both the gaps and what you currently have that is working well for you (this can often be missed).  It’s this step which highlights the solution. 

The best practice approach 

Taking the above steps in that order ensures that your solution becomes a priority for your leadership, so you get the air time you need for decision making, that you have the right people engaged across the business and onboard your innovation journey, that you are clear on your outcomes and the ROI for your business, and you have the blueprint to get there.