Making Time for Innovation!

Many of my clients are in high-tech and work in engineering, development, and product-creation areas. They are often challenged by their managers to innovate and to develop new products or services that will give their company an edge in the market. This innovation challenge is not just limited to my clients only in these functional areas or even just in high-tech companies; it spans across all functional areas, industries, and sectors (NGOs, Governments, and non-profits).

So, what is the real problem for people, especially those on the front lines, to devote their time to innovate and to help their company become more competitive in the marketplace?
I think that there are three factors that stifle innovation in any organization:

1. Lack of time: Too many employees are spending too much time reacting to everyday fires and have no time to step back and find quiet time that allows them the creative space to think through and to come up with new ideas. Connecting the dotsthis is the basis of innovationtakes a hassle-free environment in which to reflect, think, and to create. It does not give them the time and the space to indulge in Tomorrows Dreams.
2. Deficient infrastructure: The organizational and workflow infrastructure does not free up their time to allow them the luxury to germinate new ideas and to translate them into harnessed innovation.
3. Leadership deficit: Those who are in a position to innovate bestfront linersdo not get the leadership support from their higher-ups to devote their focus on ideas that lead to innovation. In many cases mediocre leadership does not provide the inspiration to those in front lines need to explore possibilities. Also, when they do come up with new ideas their ideas get hijacked by their power structure (see # 2 above).
Let us take each of the three factors in more detail and discuss how they can influence innovation throughout an organization.

1. Lack of time: This is the norm for almost everyone in a typical organization. If only I had a few more hours each day or week I could do wonders is the refrain you hear throughout any organization. But, when you look at how they are spending their time on a regular basis, Fig.-1 can help you see it more clearly.

The triangle on the left shows how a typical employee spends time doing their everyday assignments. Much of their time is spent on dealing with issues that arise from poor decisions made in the past (Yesterday’s Sins) that have now come to roost and must be addressed because the products that were developed with either by taking a myopic view of customer needs or with forcing down decisions expedient to suit their personal agendas, both of which are now becoming a problem for customers using those products. In some companies the best and creative talent is now preempted to address these issues. Because fixing the past sins can make or break a product (even the company) already in customers hands to address the burning issues stemming from these Past Sins. Although some innovations can result from these exigent forays and end runs to save a product already in the market, their long-term impact on future products to provide differentiated customer value is questionable.

2. Deficient infrastructure: This factor encompasses both; the infrastructure that exists for creative people to work in and how the organization is structurally designed to manage the free flow of new ideas. The former refers to the environment in which creative peopleengineers, developers, copywriters, designers, and artistswork and produce what they are good at. If the environment in which they work is not designed for exploiting their best talent then the time they spend in dealing with the hassles that stem from a poorly designed environment can eat up creative time of people because they are now fighting the very environment that is supposed to give them the resources to nurture creativity for their best work. Their background now becomes their foreground, and they spend their valuable time to make the available environment work for them, wasting time and talent in the process.

The organization structureespecially in a metrixed designcan create inherent conflicts of priorities and how two or more workgroups “collaborate” to best service the companysand customersneeds. Often, in metrixed organizations political factors play a major role in how resources get assigned and how assigned resources play out their parts on a given project.
3. Leadership deficit: This factor refers to how the upper management prioritizes work and how that translates into what teams do under their supervision. A good leader must provide both management support and the necessary leadership spark to inspire their team members to do the work that only they can do. Getting each team member to do the right work and giving them the work that only they can do is one of the most daunting challenges a manager faces. Most managers deal with it by merely parceling out the work for which the managers are responsible so that it gets done, without analyzing how best it can be done with the resources under them. This is where managers can do a much better job of ensuring that the right talent is engaged in the right work in creating the most value in how a job is delivered.

With this background let us now look at the two sides of Figure-1 graphic and see how we can free up more time for innovation and creative work.
To increase the area for work that covers Tomorrows Dreams, both the areas below this top line must be reduced. This can be done by an aggressive assault on stamping out Yesterdays Sins and proper management of Today’s Fires.
Yesterdays Sins start becoming a normal operating regime when those in the chain of command do not fully understand what management work entails. There are four functions of management: Leading, Planning, Organizing, and Setting up Controls. Each of these functions has, in turn, its own Activities. For example the Leading function includes Motivating, Communicating, Decision Making, Selecting, and Developing people. A manager must carefully plan their Activities under each function, and, not only do the work defined by these functions, but also do the work that only they can do, delegating everything else downwards. Most managers do not know this or do not know how to do it, and they spend too much time doing technical work that others can do, leaving little time to do the real management work that that only they can do and that they must do.

The problem is that undone management work never screams out for attention, but undone technical work does. This is why Yesterdays Sins and Todays Fires take so much time up and down in an organization. Both of these priorities stem from technical fires that explode because of poor decisions made in the past, not spending enough time doing management work by the higher-ups. Undone management work thus comes to bite you back later and this cycle continues unabated. Undone management work rears its ugly head only later as technical work (firefighting), that is why it is so tempting to ignore it in preference to doing technical work. Besides, most managers are promoted for doing great technical work, so they take great comfort in responding to it.

So, to deal with the time spent on Yesterdays Sins and Todays Fires senior leadership in a company must evaluate how they carry out their management duties and that everyone is clearly aware of what is technical work and what is management work. For example, in the Yesterdays Sins category could be a bad hire that slipped through the screening process. Here, the right people to vet the candidate were too busy fighting fires and could not interview the candidate. When this happens the right peoplethe hiring managermust take immediate action to terminate the bad hire, rather than hoping that they will come around after the break-in period. In most cases the reason right people were not available to screen this candidate was because they were too busy dealing with Yesterdays Sins or with Todays Fires. Both of these priorities stem from technical work that resulted from bad management decisions of the past. If Hiring and Developing people are seen as a management Activities, interviewing the candidate should get the appropriate priority to prevent Yesterdays Sin tomorrow!

The same pattern repeats in dealing with Todays Fires. When an irate and important customer calls the CEO about a product problem, everyone, including the CEO jumps on the problem and the team or the person that can effectively address the problem get overwhelmed by the management attention up and down the chain, wasting valuable organizational resources. The right approach is to delegate the problem to the right team or person and let them solve it with the priority you assign to them, without everyone looking at its status, including the CEO every hour. Once again, doing this the right way, even for a breaking out fire requires the right management discipline and priority to attend to it.

The graphic in Fig-1 illustrates how it is possible to progressively shrink the times occupied by Yesterdays Sins and Todays Fires. To make this work for you systematically takes a plan, leadership, commitment, and discipline. Once this regime works and starts freeing time from the bottom two areas of how work is carried out, more time become available to do creative work at a pace that leads to innovation. This is graphically shown in the green triangle on the right side of Figure-1.

As an organization gets on a path to recover some of its time and redeploys it to innovation as shown here, the next step is to carefully look at how each professional spends their time on the tasks that they do and to evaluate if their time can be redistributed from merely doing the core work that they do to doing more and more value-added work that creates greater impact on the business. Using these two strategies in tandem can make a major difference to how an organization realizes its innovation agenda to become a competitive juggernaut.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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