Bud Bilanich | The Common Sense Guy

Innovate to Execute

Skillful execution of the things that matter is one of the secrets in my book 4 Secrets of High Performing Organizations.  Innovation is a critical part of execution. 

There was an article on the Hasbro Game Division’s approach to innovation in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.  It seems that every Friday at lunchtime, game designers, marketing managers and other employees play board games in the cafeteria.  This is part of the Hasbro product development strategy.  The idea is help find ways to update its classic games and to create new ones.

I found this to be a pretty innovative way of going about product innovation.  Below, I’ve listed a few ideas I have about how you can make your business and the people you lead more innovative.

1. Intelligently match the right people with the right jobs in order to maximize their expertise and creative thinking skills. Making a good match requires that leaders have access to, and more importantly use, important information about employees and their preferences.  Good listening and observation skills are important here. People express over time what interests and excites them. Are you listening and watching?
2. Freedom to take different paths without censure. When people are free to approach their work the way they choose, innovation is more likely to result. This does not mean allowing total open-endedness or changing goals frequently or failing to define them clearly. That is a mismanagement of freedom.
3. Commitment of resources: Time and money can either support or kill innovation.  Some time pressures can heighten creativity. Organizations routinely kill innovation with fake deadlines or impossibly tight ones. This creates distrust, or burnout. Likewise, the lack of money to pursue alternative courses can quickly revert workplace processes to the status quo. Creativity takes time. Incubation periods are needed. And it takes some resources dedicated to the 'starts and fits' process usually involved in evolving innovative ideas.
4. Diversity in the work-group: To maximize the potential of innovation, leaders need to create teams with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. When people come together with diverse intellectual foundations and approaches to work, ideas often combine in exciting and useful ways. Leaders often make the mistake of putting similar people together. Their very homogeneity, however, does little to enhance expertise and creative thinking.
5. Effective incentives: To encourage ongoing creativity in thinking, leaders need to praise creative ideas and to acknowledge the effort and energy put forth by all who contribute insights to innovation and change -- even those ideas that are not put into practice. To sustain passion, the people you lead need to feel their work matters and is important.  Leaders need to allow ideas and discussion to flow freely, and to support certain experiential work that may not culminate in a successful end result. In an environment where fear of consequences overrides exploring new and innovative ideas, creativity is thwarted.
6. Organizational support: Innovation is enhanced when the entire organization – especially those leaders at the top support it. Leaders must ensure that information sharing and collaboration is the norm. Political problems and gossip take people's attention away from work. That sense of mutual purpose and excitement must be encouraged and supported. It can be killed by cliques and political factions, or the changeable whims of the leader. Often, the biggest hurdle to solving problems isn't ignorance -- it's access to the right information at the right time. Sometimes the sharing of information within organizations is not easy due to geographic distances, political squabbles, internal competition and bad incentive systems that hinder the spread of ideas.

If you put these six common sense ideas to work in your organization, you’ll be better at executing innovation in your organization and with the people you lead.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for reading.  Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense.  Check out my other blog: www.CareerSuperStar.com for common sense advice on becoming a success in your life and career.

I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.

Bud

PS: Speaking of Alex’s Lemonade Stand – my fundraising page is still open.  Please go to www.FirstGiving.com/TheCommonSenseGuy to read Alex’s inspiring story and to donate if you can.

Use Your Common Sense -- Communicate Your Strategy

I saw an amazing piece in today’s USA Today.  It was in the lower left corner of the front page of the business section called USA Today Snapshots.  Here’s the exact quote.

• "Most employers don’t share company strategy – Of the companies with a formal strategy in place, 70% describe their performance as better than their competition, compared with 27% of those without it, according to a survey.  Percentage of companies that tell their employees what the strategy is: 95% don’t tell, 5% tell."

The survey, entitled Making Strategy Execution a Competitive Advantage, was conducted by the Cognos/Palladium Group and included responses from 143 strategy management professionals.

I wasn’t surprised by the first result.  It’s difficult to perform if you don’t have a strategy.  On the other hand, I find it shocking that 95% of companies that have a strategy don’t communicate it to their employees.

This just is not common sense. 

How can people execute a strategy if they don’t know what it is?

Clarity of purpose and direction is one of the secrets in my book, 4 Secrets of High Performing Organizations.  To me, creating and achieving clarity of purpose and direction goes something like this:

• Your mission defines your purpose for being – why you are in business.
• Your vision defines a medium range goal – what you hope to accomplish in the next three to five years.
• Your strategy defines a plan for reaching your three to five year vision.
• Your annual business plans break your strategic plan into one year chunks.
• Business unit, department and individual objectives define accomplishments for all organizational units and individual members of your organization.
• If individual, department and business unit objectives are met, you should achieve your annual business plan.
• If you achieve your annual business plan each year, you have successfully executed your strategy, and you will have achieved your vision.

I don’t know how any of this can happen if your people are not aware of your strategy.  To me, communicating your strategy throughout your organization is so much common sense that it’s a no brainer.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for reading.  Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more leadership common sense.  Check out my other blog www.CareerSuperStar.com for common sense advice on becoming the life and career star you are meant to be.

I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.

Bud

PS: Speaking of Alex’s Lemonade Stand – my fundraising page is still open.  Please go to www.FirstGiving.com/TheCommonSenseGuy to read Alex’s inspiring story and to donate if you can.

More on Sweating the Small Stuff

Gary Ryan Blair, The Goals Guy, read my post on sweating the small stuff and sent me a piece on quality from his book, Everything Counts.  It’s great common sense advice.  I’ve included it in its entirety here…

Always Sweat the Small Stuff

Skillful execution of the things that matter is one of the principles in my book 4 Secrets of High Performing Organizations.  “The things that matter” are the key words in the preceding statement.

The things that matter vary from business to business.  Today, I’d like to discuss Cucina Colore, an Italian restaurant in Cherry Creek North in Denver. 

What matters in a restaurant?  Good food, good service certainly; but these days, good food and good service are a given for any restaurant just to remain in business.  The food at Cucina Colore is delicious – I love all of their pasta dishes for dinner, and their arugula and grilled shrimp salad at lunch.

However, attention is detail is what sets Cucina Colore apart.  The dining room, while simply decorated, is immaculate.  Water, iced tea glasses and coffee cups are refilled promptly.  The managers are always on the floor, greeting customers and monitoring the service. 

The other day, Cathy and I had a late lunch at Cucina Colore prior to her taking me to the airport.  As we were leaving, I saw another example of attention to detail at Cucina Colore.  The lunch rush was over.  The hostess had a stack of the lunch menus (which are in a very nice folder).  She was wiping down each one – inside and out.  I don’t know about you, but I never like a restaurant that has menus with food left over from other customers.  Wiping menus to make sure they are clean for the next days lunch service – a small thing but an example of attention to detail at Cucina Colore.

Here’s another example.  A few weeks ago, Cathy and I went to a Friday afternoon movie.  After the movie, we decided to have an early dinner at Cucina Colore.  It was about 5:00.  The restaurant was empty – the calm before the dinner storm.  As we were eating, I noticed the bus people going table to table, straightening the place settings, and checking each piece of silverware and water glass to make sure that they were clean and free of water spots.  Again, something I really appreciated.  I really hate dirty silverware and water glasses in a restaurant.

Cucina Colore always has clean menus, silverware and water glasses.  This is not by accident.  It’s because of attention to detail. 

The common sense point here is simple: small things make a world of difference.  What are the small things that can help you differentiate your business?  Identify them and take care of them and you’ll be on your way to success.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for reading.  Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense.  Check out my other blogs: www.CareerSuperStar.com for common sense advice on becoming the life and career star you are meant to be; and www.CommonSenseDay.com to learn more about Use Your Common Sense Day -- November 4, and to read stories of common sense in action.

I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.

Bud

PS: Speaking of Alex’s Lemonade Stand – my fundraising page is still open.  Please go to www.FirstGiving.com/TheCommonSenseGuy to read Alex’s inspiring story and to donate if you can.

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