Issue No. 431 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a new quick-reading book (also on audio) on why your organization needs a chief innovation officer—especially for these unprecedented times. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here my recent book reviews.
Can You Crunch Crisis With Innovation?
Timing is everything, right? So in my queue for this week’s book review is the perfect title at the perfect time: Fearless Innovation: A No-Nonsense Guide.
With the USA’s unprecedented response to the coronavirus pandemic this week (national emergency declaration, travel bans, schools and sports venues closed, stock market gyrations, etc.)—you may have time to think more proactively about your organization. At least two people at your shop should read and report on this book within seven days.
The managing director of Cisco’s global Co-Innovation Centers says that today 63 percent of companies are hiring chief innovation officers and “more than 90 percent of companies are implementing new tech to support innovation processes.”
Subtitled, “Going Beyond the Buzzword to Continuously Drive Growth, Improve the Bottom Line, and Enact Change,” Alex Goryachev has no small task. In the sea of books and resources on “innovation,” an over-used and mostly misunderstood buzzword, why should I read yet one more yada/yada/yada treatise on an author’s favorite anecdotes? Yikes! Especially when he quotes Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert:
“Large corporations welcome innovation and individualism in the same way the dinosaurs welcomed large meteors.”
But…read the contents page and you’re hooked. Here are just nine of the 42 juiciest chapter titles and subtitles:
• No Leadership = No Strategy = No Innovation
• If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It
• Incentivize Innovation through Radical Transparency
• Stop Thinking “Disruptively”
• The Pen is Mightier Than the Program
• The Lonely Innovator Myth
• Hire a Chief Innovation Officer
• Put Governance Processes into Action
• Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Urgent! Order Fearless Innovation today and read the innovation and change insights with today’s coronavirus filter. How will this affect our organization? What should we do? What should we not do? A crisis brings opportunity (see my Crisis Bucket)—and this resource will help you inject new thinking and new creativity as you build a culture of innovation.
Our globe’s crisis mandates innovation and could bring out the best in entrepreneurship. Already, I’ve noticed this:
• From Fine Dining to Drive-Thru. Per the Seattle Times on March 12, 2020, “Canlis, Seattle’s premier fine dining institution, announced Thursday morning that, due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, it will suspend fine dining operations indefinitely, but start a drive-thru burger joint in their parking lot, a pop-up bagel shop, and an at-home dinner delivery service.”
• Small Groups. Many churches have long preached the core value that “life change happens best in small groups.” Now that cities and states are limiting attendance of public gatherings, maybe church leaders will double-down on enriching the small group culture of their churches with customized curriculum and beefed up leader training for small group settings.
• Pretzels and a Mask. When changing planes in Panama City, Panama, last month, I complimented the airport pretzel shop staff for their entrepreneurial smarts—they added surgical masks to the menu for just a buck!
• Move to Digital. Nick Nicholaou “was in a roundtable meeting last week with many of the largest churches in the south and west. Many said they are stopping the printing and distribution of bulletins…” He adds, “This could be a great opportunity to transition the congregation from physical to digital bulletins and programs!” (Read his article.)
I think Alex Goryachev would salute these innovators. The author, interestingly, writes about his early days with Napster. Noting that there are three common—but inappropriate—responses to change (ignoring, shaming, and regulating), he admits that “Napster never survived the litigation, but ironically, the music industry did not survive Napster either and had to adapt—the digital music revolution was unstoppable, no matter the amount of regulation.”
If your reading style is to surf a book first, you’ll get sucked into the fascinating case studies in each chapter, including:
• Lego. Yup, those little bricks that ingeniously find your bare feet! Since 1949, they’ve sold more than 400 billion!
• Wikipedia Foundation. Did you know that after 244 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica published its final physical edition in 2010 (and a 250th anniversary yearbook in 2018)? “Today, Wikipedia features over 48 million articles in hundreds of languages, which would fit into about 19,000 print volumes of Britannica.”
• TripAdvisor. Get this—456 million people visit the site each month! There are two attention-getting signs on the founder’s office door: “Speed wins” and “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.”
• Cisco. The author’s aha moment of transparency is worth the price of the book. Proud of the innovative program Cisco launched to partner with startup companies, he got push-back from a Cisco employee with a great idea (page 103 is a must-read).
• IKEA. Three of our five grandchildren are 17 (they’re triplets!).The case study on IKEA is now required reading for them. Founder Ingvar Kamprad launched IKEA at age (wait for it…) 17. Read how IKEA innovatively leverages the open-source philosophy to stay close to the customer.
• Bloomberg Philanthropies. Yes—that Bloomberg! Read how and why Michael R. Bloomberg’s philanthropy wing facilitates innovation teams (“i-teams”) in municipal governments.
If you delegate your reading—and a team member summarizes this book at your next weekly staff meeting, I’ll ship a free copy of this book to the first person who emails me that the reviewer did NOT mention the author’s hilarious true story on pages 55-56.
In one of his first jobs, the author produced a robust metrics scorecard each week. The emailed report was greeted with “Great job!” or “Fantastic!” or “So interesting!” But the numbers were not great—decline was evident—but clearly no one was reading the report.
“So I tried a little experiment,” writes Goryachev. “One week, I password protected the Excel spreadsheet before sending it out. To my amusement, I received the same positive responses, but not one person asked me for the password—obviously, no one was reading the report. So, a few weeks later, I just stopped producing the report and invested my time in surfing the web. And no: no one ever asked about those numbers again.”
(For another LOL example, read pages 222-223 in Mastering the Management Buckets, “Delete Dumb Delegation: Do you still need that monthly report?”)
You’re busy and this review is long enough. But if you’re ready to move from buzzwords to bounty—this “No-Nonsense Guide” will point you in the right direction. And let me add, with more than 32 pages of endnotes, the resources/links are phenomenal—and the succinct chapter summaries are PowerPoint-worthy.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Fearless Innovation: Going Beyond the Buzzword to Continuously Drive Growth, Improve the Bottom Line, and Enact Change (A No-Nonsense Guide), by Alex Goryachev. To listen to the audio version (6 hours, 4 minutes), visit Libro.fm. And thanks to Wiley and Fortier Public Relations for the review copy.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Alex Goryachev suggests there are three (worst) responses to change: ignoring, shaming, and regulating. Here’s permission to be frank during our staff meeting today: what is the typical default response to change in our organization’s culture? How do you feel about that?
2) The author quotes Peter Drucker, “What gets measured, gets improved.” After a team member presents a brief review of chapter 3, “If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It,” ask this question: What’s the difference between “activity” metrics and “impact” metrics? What are we measuring for improvement—that is actually improving?
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship:
The Lemonade Stand Continuum
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
One of the big ideas in the Program Bucket, Chapter 6, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is this:
“Don’t Be the 8th Lemonade Stand in a Row of 9! It’s risky to be the first program—it’s high risk to be the last.”
That’s a principle from Marketing Your Ministry: Ten Critical Principles, which I co-authored with Dr. Robert Hisrich in 1990. After reading Fearless Innovation, I would have enjoyed an afternoon of lemonade and pretzels with Alex Goryachev and Bob Hisrich. As Goryachev readily admits, there’s tension between schools of thought on innovation and entrepreneurship. To widen your thinking, read my reviews of two other books by Hisrich:
• Entrepreneurship, by Robert D. Hisrich. Along with co-authors Michael P. Peters and Dean A. Shepherd, Hisrich has created perhaps the most comprehensive study ever of entrepreneurial men and women. In this remarkable 602-page book, filled with fascinating sidebar profiles of in-the-trenches entrepreneurs, the authors uncover every entrepreneurial stone ever imagined and conclude their work with 17 case studies covering 120 pages from the Rug Bug Corporation to “Mamma Mia: The Little Show That Could!” (Read my review.)
• Corporate Entrepreneurship: How to Create a Thriving Entrepreneurial Spirit Throughout Your Company, by Robert D. Hisrich and Claudine Kearney. You’ll appreciate the practical insights, like the “Flop of the Month Award.” In seeking to build a core value for the “tolerance of mistakes,” (nine markers for entrepreneurial cultures), “BMW has a ‘successful failures’ program that awards employees whose innovative ideas fail during implementation by giving a ‘flop of the month’ award.” (Read my review.)
Delegate additional reading on the topic with these gems:
• Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder, by Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal, Ph.D. Clifton’s core belief: “Entrepreneurs create customers. And customers, in turn, create jobs and economic growth. Almost no leader knows this.” He adds, “Virtually all U.S. and world leaders have misdiagnosed the core problem and put billions and billions of dollars into mistaken strategies that are not helping America’s economy, much less the world’s.” Hmmm. Still timely! (Read my review.)
• Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear, by Max Lucado. And speaking of fearless, encourage your team with this Master Wordsmither’s eight-letter acronym, “P.E.A.C.E.F.U.L.” delivering eight worry-stoppers. It’s the perfect book to delegate to a team member. “Pick a chapter and give us a five-minute reminder on how to imagine a life without fear.” Read my review (click here) or listen to the book on Libro.fm (click here: 3 hours and 33 minutes).
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. To leverage the innovation gifts and entrepreneurial strengths of your team and board, it often helps to ask an outside (unbiased) voice to evaluate and inspire key people. Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
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