From Joyce Wycoff:
A fellow innovation consultant is experiencing a client challenge that is probably familiar to many of you. We thought it would make a great topic for sharing ideas and suggestions ... which you can share in the comment section below.
After helping launch an innovation initiative which identified some worthwhile projects, the consultants reports: One of the disappointments have been that the projects identified and staffed after the InnovationGame plan have not moved very far. The innovation initiative leader reported, "They have money, each team has a chief engineer or mid level manager, and still they are not going anywhere." When the consultant asked further, the issue seemed to be one of being dragged back to doing execution things.
The leader described this as the "97%" trap; all the main time (97% of their time) of engineers in the organization is about execution. While the project teams all believe the innovation projects are important to move forward, their management and senior leadership agree with the need and importance of the projects, and they have money(!), the need to get "things done now" creeps back in and pushes the innovation projects off the calendar.
The project team members are being pulled: they get the message "execution first, get products today finished and work on the innovation project in addition" (implied: on your "free time").
So what are the possible solutions? How do you focus the scarce resource of time to non-urgent but absolutely critical innovation projects? What advice would you give our consultant?
Thanks for your suggestions ... we'll share them in a future post.
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