Kim and Jack went into the leadership meeting, ready to present their strategy for the winner of the innovation contest. They were excited and nervous. Focusing the winning team on measuring the value of their service to the customer was different from what they had done in the past. Typically, their innovation efforts were about creating a new feature and unfortunately, those efforts didn’t always pan out.
Last year’s winner created an app that would track the progress of an order as it went through manufacturing, packaging and delivery. The team wanted to build excitement for the customer, anticipation for the product they ordered. They provided pictures of the product as it was being assembled and even shared the details of how it was manufactured. Although the app had generated some excitement from the press, it had not really made a difference for their customers, or for their business bottom line. And it took a great deal of effort – app development was not part of their core competency.
Kim wanted to move away from these investments in innovation with no visible return – it was not sustainable. Although she was happy that the team had learned some new skills, many employees were getting discouraged by the response from customers and from stakeholders. Innovation was by nature disruptive and people needed to get positive feedback to continue to put in the extra effort.
Jack stood up to tell the story of how they had come to the conclusion that measuring customer impact was a better focus for the innovation team winner than creating a new customer service feature. “We have been behaving like a startup, always creating something totally new that is outside our core competency,” he said. “I know we want to push our boundaries. However, we should be innovating from our strengths, leveraging our operational capabilities. This is our advantage over startups, and how we can stay ahead of the pack.”
“Our team learned a great deal last year. And I want to continue to invest in our people to learn and grow,” added Kim. “But let’s be strategic about that investment. Let’s start from our competitive advantage, and learn skills that help us grow that strength.”
Kim and Jack looked around the room to see the team’s reaction. Although there were a few people leaning forward, nodding their heads, they also saw a lot of skepticism. Tom spoke up, “Our employees are discouraged. They are tempted by the excitement of the startup world. We have been losing some of our younger employees who see us as old and stagnant.” Tom was their HR manager and he had been reporting for months a decline in employee satisfaction.
Kim glanced quickly at Jack for support. This was the part of their strategy that would require a leap of faith from the leadership team. “We want to dig into our employee and our customer needs. Part of this effort will be a discovery phase to better understand what success means for the people involved in our business,” Kim said. She looked around the room; now she had lost everyone, even Tom. How could she convince them that investing their innovation dollars in a discovery process would yield more lasting return than investing in a quick fix feature?
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