Innovation.

A big word. Means different things to different people. And many a times most (mis)used in Town Halls by Sr. Leaders, which mostly results in employees with big question marks on their face. Employees have questions like “OK, I understand you want me to Innovate, but can u tell me what exactly to do?” or comments like, ” Seems like a new management fad, take it easy folks, it will die off like any other Fad. We are not Google or 3M, we can’t innovate”.

Our innovation practice started off with these conversation as triggers. In my experience in working with organization like AMDOCS, Zensar, Tata AIG and many others, I discovered that we need to bring in more clarity in this area. These organizations are moving through an intense learning journey which will bear fruit to its proactive actions in times to come.

I have developed 3 distinct offerings for organizations.

a. Innovator Nurture Programs

This intervention is designed after understanding client’s specific domain of business, revenue model and organization. structure. If the organization has evolved a framework of identifying potential innovators, we create interventions to impart specific skills, techniques and guidelines for nurturing these innovators. The result is bringing in clarity and expectation setting in terms of what exactly employees are expected to do in their respective work context. The bigger benefit organization receives is creating a workplace with heightened engagement, excitement without impacting existing business model or making drastic changes.

b. “Directing Innovation” Intervention – (Designed specifically for Sr. Management)

In our experience, what impacts Innovation Movement negatively is lack of clarity at the Top. Many a times Sr. Management just picks up some references & examples randomly and communicates in organization which do not fit the Organization context. This leads to employees resisting innovation rather than welcoming it.

We have designed a specific Intervention aimed only at the Sr. Management about how to drive Innovation in organization using their power, position and authority. The program details a specific step-by-step Innovation Management Model specifically custom designed for the organization.

The regular feedback i have received,

“Thank you Raj, for this intervention. I kind of was confused about the whole thing but now i exactly know what needs to be done. Many misconceptions clarified and many things that i was doing right were re-affirmed. Am glad I became a part of this intervention”

3. Innovation Infrastructure Development Consulting

Unlike the two mentioned above, this is a long-term engagement with organizations committed to crack the innovation journey. After many one off programs and interventions, sometime the innovation movement dies off. The reasons typically identified are People are not creative, People here resist change, Innovation is not meant for our kind of Business, Sr. management didn’t push it enough etc.

Our consulting engagement is based on the belief that there is a method to madness. The first requisite to developing Innovation mindset in Organization is to create what we term it as “Innovation Infrastructure”. All the organization who have successfully mastered the art of innovation have been successful in creating this Infrastructure. May it be Google, IBM or 3M or back home TATA Nano.

We have created again a detailed step by step model of building this Innovation Infrastructure on which the Innovation Movement can be built successfully. However, it needs a serious and long-term commitment from Sr. Leaders to follow through the process and also active engagement from different functions like IT backend support function, HR, OD, Operations to name a few. The proposed Infrastructure is often developed by engaging all of these people meaningfully. We come in as a facilitator and implementor of the whole process.

If you are a leader and wish to make a lasting difference to your organization and personally build history of successful innovation, do consider this. I would be more than glad to be your partner in this journey.

Drop me a line at 1.raj.mali@gmail.com and we can look at this new possibility.