Innovation Blog
The Why of an Innovation Factory
The What of your Asset Portfolio
The How In the Empathetic Arts
Five Verbs (IP)
The RACI matrix almost got it right but still harbors too much ambiguity. In your team’s formal planning, govern only what is worth documenting outside email, and nothing else. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.
Is Your Project Team Building An Asset Portfolio?
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.
Is Your Project Team A Factory?
Manage your team like a factory because you want discipline, predictability, rhythm. Manage like a factory because you care about speed, quality, and waste.
Future State Scripts
A script is a simple, raw, unambiguous format to get the sequence of actions on paper, primed for a Future State Process Flow.
Future State Process Flows
Visual representation of the customer journey or employee experience - sequence of actions, primary path, and peripheral paths.
Awareness Blast
At the start of every project, to accomplish the first “A” in ADKAR, notify your stakeholders. An Awareness Blast is a low-maintenance way to let stakeholders know they need to contribute, and they need to help to identify other stakeholders who need to contribute.
Training Approach
“K” - Knowledge - is the heart of ADKAR. Before you dig into detail of actual training material, put to paper all the expectations surrounding your training activities. Often, a Training Approach can apply across projects.
Manage The People Dimension of Change With ADKAR
To manage the People side of Change, apply a framework such as ADKAR (owned by PROSCI). Shepherd your stakeholders through Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement with corresponding assets.
Build A Project Plan With Only Five Verbs
Verb Sprawl is a real problem that slows teams down. In planning your team’s work, instead of governing meetings or emails, govern what is worth documenting outside email. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.
What to Document In An Innovation Factory
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.
Improve Your Culture’s Speed
Which of your culture traits can you trace to impacting your speed? Consider trust, ambiguity, interruptions, fatigue, burnout, bottlenecks, egos, hero mentality, simplicity, complexity, silos, bureaucracy, meeting gridlock, and email overload. Fix your culture. Fix your Speed.
Combat the Culture of Meeting Gridlock and Email Overload
Your organization might be caught in meeting gridlock and email overload. You cannot just talk and email your way to success. You must document things outside email. It’s dry, sterile, unforgiving, and ruthless. But documentation keeps its value. A ruthless factory results in a valuable Asset Portfolio.