In the style of the Agile Manifesto, what if we rewrote it from the start? What would you write?

Project-specific calculations are important but can be optimistic and unrealistic. What’s more constructive is cross-project prioritization. Instead of sweating calculations, ensure your organization starts, completes, and prioritizes the right work.

In innovation, most attention is the work within the project. Before your next project begins, consider what questions your team should answer. This documentation provides transparency, alignment, and sets you up for success.

Innovation professionals spend a lot of time in meetings. Rethink the relationship between meetings and “real work.” Have a firm grasp of the numerous ingredients of effective meetings.

Documentation is unpopular to build, but once you have it, it’s valuable to your current and future teams. Documentation is valuable for so long, it qualifies as an Asset Portfolio.

Surely some activities in your organization are important to measure. A scorecard captures the “Metrics That Matter” - Leading and Lagging. Historical, Current, and Target values.

Barriers, Risks, Issues, Questions (BRIQ) - until you know exactly what to do with them, get them on paper somewhere - a kind of parking lot!

Your colleagues, especially your manager, need to know if you’re bored, buried, or somewhere in between. Share your workload so the team can balance the workload!

Perceptions of health are important! They can be as easy to share as Red, Yellow, and Green. THEN the conversation starts!

What is worth documenting inside your organization? For starters, ALL these. Execution’s best two friends are simplicity and transparency. These documents ruthlessly keep you simple and transparent. These are valuable for months, YEARS, elevating documentation to a title of ASSETS. Building and maintaining these in your innovation work ensures a healthy, Ruthless Asset Factory.

In a fast-moving world, you need a simple framework for weekly reflection. Your colleagues don’t have to finish and share every sentence every week, but everyone must be thoughtful of these every week. Own your praise. Own your critique. Own your silence.

Don’t rely on HR to define and govern feedback. Own it. Conduct it yourself. Be approachable. Groom it in others. Isolate feedback into three communication channels: email etiquette, meeting etiquette, and deliverable contribution. Neutralize personality conflict. Ask and negotiate “What do you want me to do differently?”