Welcome to the February 2010 edition of Strategic Innovation newsletter, a free monthly newsletter on leadership, strategy and innovation. Delivered on the first Tuesday of each month.

Back issues are archived for free downloading at www.DanielLockConsulting.com.

Tips for improving business processes

• Quality is possible and rework eliminated when the causes of the errors are removed.
• Combining operations, moving people closer together, or automation can minimize the moving of documents and information.
• Waiting time can be minimized by combining operations, balancing work loads, or automation.
• Identifying root causes reduces trouble-shooting.
• The increase in complexity results in increasing difficulties everywhere as activities, decisions, relationships, and essential information become more difficult to understand and more difficult to manage.

Innovation Nation

In a recent article in the Financial Review the good PM set out a vision for sustained productivity improvement in Australia. 

By all accounts Australia’s productivity growth is lagging.

I’m not going into politics, but productivity growth, is the responsibility of every manager. Though too often it's a haphazard and an accidental approach taken when the platform is not just burning, but burnt to a cinder.

Raising productivity isn’t about whipping the workers to do more, it’s about managers driving innovation, raising the bar to a new level.  And innovation is a process. A repeatable process, which can be codifiedand mastered.

As distinct from problem solving, you are looking to move to a new level, not because of pain, instead out of desire to reach a new level of achievement. Apple just introduced the iPad, after a string of product innovations since Job’s return.

The 4 stages are four basic stages: Assessment, Qualification, Planning, and Implementation. Let us look at each:

Assessment:

Create a funnel of ideas. This is best run as a series of workshops run foreveryone in the organisation, as opposed to the obligatory suggestion box. A structured and facilitated brainstorming approach will yield extraordinary volume of ideas, sometime hundreds in single sitting.

Qualification:

Simply put, not all ideas are good, or at least in line with the myriad of constraints on an organisation. The primary test to apply is strategic alignment, does it fit your strategic profile, and horizon? This shouldbe a simple checklist you can apply.

Next prioritise according to risk, ease of implementation and pay-off (eg. a show stopper, improvement and someday/maybe)

Planning:

Build out a plan of intermediate objectives (IO’s), pre-requisite maps, and critical chain project plans (CCPM) for implementation. Assess risk,and gain buy-in from all key players, internal and external.

Remember Machiavelli, nothing is more difficult than selling an innovation. So don’t skip the buy-in phase.

Implementation:

Execute, rapidly, and with agility. Re-orientate with the environment as often as you can (this is required more than you think). Doing something newand innovative is challenging and requires new organisational learning.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

This touches on some key processes that are required for any successfulbusiness. Aside from the innovation process itself, there is the Strategic Thinking process that must precede, in order to create astrategic profile.

Planning, creating buy-in, critical chain project management (CCPM) are additional processes embedded that will help you implement theinnovations fast, creating an unassailable lead in the market.

Technique of the month: Quick and easy creativity

Brainstorming can be messy, time consuming, and one person can dominate or shoot others down, causing people with agendas to get their ideas heard while others are ignored altogether.

Avoid this by not talking. That’s it, don’t speak, instead use Post-it notes and pens instead.

1. Get people to write one idea per piece of paper on a particular theme.
2. Ask them to write as fast as possible, there are no bad ideas.
3. Gather the ideas together, clarify any ambiguous ideas, remember no one is to criticise or even comment, just get a definition.
4. Group like ideas together, into themes.
5. Write it up, and select your next actions.

This can be done in as little as 15 minutes with as many as dozen people at a time.