Many a frazzled workers, managers and executives are expressing a growing burnout. While busy delivering on next quarter’s constantly growing expectations, they need to come-up with operational and growth innovation - the associated activities of which are clamoring for an increasing slice of their time. Sure everybody wants the benefits of innovation, but why is achieving this Nirvana so painful? Well the answer lies in organization – funny how that word is related to the word “organic”, something few companies truly are in practice. In many current innovation processes, information doesn’t flow freely and things often wind-up getting done for fear of not doing them – rather than because of the opportunity that they can bring. People in an idea’s loop are often grudging followers rather than willing participants; the whole thing feels wrong.
The fundamental problem, whether recognized or not, is that many organizations today are a series of independent yet connected businesses bound by structures too rigid to promote organic metamorphoses. These structures are still based on a model where a few decision-makers held much of the information – which we know is no longer the case. In fact, the true knowledge base of any organization is the distributed and diverse pool that makes-up the eco-system between employees, suppliers, customers and other interested stakeholders. This is a seismic shift that has fundamentally altered the balance of power and the nature in which we behave; around everything. So one must ask why we insist on maintaining “control and command” (yes in that order) structures and expect a different outcome? It is illogical.
The way many organizations are still structured today around innovation, is that when a good idea comes across the radar, the organization has small groups or individuals (the usual suspects) that are turned to for collaboration, evaluation and go-forward decisions. These “go-to” people are trusted to deliver the bacon and heavily relied-upon for many other things – they have many responsibilities and are busy people. The core of the problem is that more often than not, these folks are being called-on above and beyond the call of duty. Because without Open Innovation and Distributed Tasking, most ideas land on their desk as raw concepts – thinly expressed, under researched, un-justified and poorly documented; and now the onus is placed on them to do the legwork to develop them into innovations – or at the very least, into something with enough substance to make a sound decision on. That’s not their job and they don’t have the time or inclination to make it so. So these critical role players are the ones to usually disengage from a structured innovation process first; leaving a vacuum that is hard, if not impossible to fill – and in doing so, leaving a visible, negative and contagious endorsement of the innovation process’ value for those who remain.
Open Innovation and Distributed Tasking can largely address this conundrum. By setting the stage for information expectations, management can establish pre-requisites for advancement to decision; community members and role players now can drive towards corralling the minimum information-set, reaching for resources and shepherding the right protagonists around an idea - in a direction that the organization can make decisions on. These pre-conditions are purely operational rather than creative ones. And with the understanding that none of us is smarter than all of us, the participation, diversity, expertise and expediency are all there for the leveraging. One just has to see the light and have the courage to try. As sure as mistakes will be made, success will come with them.
An enlightened management model is what will unleash the innovation potential every organization has. As many innovation practitioners can attest, the problem isn’t getting ideas, it is getting them done. And because of the lop-sided success ratio, a lot of legwork needs to be carried-out before we can find the elusive winning needle in the proverbial haystack. Confined tasking is the problem - distributed tasking is the answer. Sounds simple enough, yet resistance to it is formidable. In fact, it is the single biggest factor restraining the innovation process. The real madness of the situation is that the people most impacted by this miss-alignment are those who are resisting the change the most – and having to endure the consequences.