Like you, I'm a reader. There are a wide array of resources I get daily, in and out of our industry: tech, sales, business, political, marketing, news, other publications and all the good reads that folks like you send me via email. Such reading is on top of doing my work, of course. The column read that is on my mind today was in CEO Magazine, which ran an e-article entitled: 6 Imperatives for Driving Innovation In Your Company.
My thought today is to take their topic and tweak it a bit. Clearly companies make up an industry. So let me include innovation in our industry as well at your company as part of the message.
Let's begin with CEO's 6 bullet points below, verbatim. So the headlines are theirs, but the commentary following each bullet is ours.
1) Innovation needs to be nurtured and choices need to be made about which initiatives to triage and which to focus on. The basic concept here is to do an objective analysis as to what is likely to pay off and when. This will help determine your focus and where you allocate time, talent and treasure resources.
2) R&D are two distinct things and both Research and Development need to be managed to focus on value added outputs. Some might think of R&D as being only for a manufacturer. Wrong! Suppliers, communities, retailers and others need to be routinely evaluating what they do through cross checks inside and outside of our industry. One reason reading is fundamental to growth, is because you may read an article about topic X, but it spring boards as an idea into opportunity Y. We've mentioned before those companies or locations for firms – yes in our industry – that have daily reading and discussion sessions. Yes, on company time. They read some article(s), then discuss them. If you do this for 60 or 90 days, you will not only be hooked, but you will also be advancing your business – and careers! – in ways you never dreamed of before. No excuses, just take the time and do it.
3) Innovation starts with your Human Talent strategy: who you hire, how you measure and motivate them. CEO didn't mention our human talent, management and sales guru, Tim Connor, but they could have. His Words of Wisdom blog and monthly Featured Article are routinely among the top reads on our site. If you are among those who invest in business building reading, please check out some of his top books at this link. When you read one, you'll see why he has sold 2 million of them. Need a coach to help with such innovation and change management process? Call Tim or one of our MHSpeakerTrainer.org talents.
4) Innovation touches every department — including accounting, hr, marketing. I mentioned Tim Connor, let me do it again. He has a book, that ought to be required reading in every firm. Corporate Disconnect. I first heard Tim talk on this insightful subject at the Wisconsin Housing Alliance (WHA) about 5 1/2 years ago. I bought the book, which was grand. The communications inside companies are as critical as those outside of companies. Getting departments talking can spot opportunities and supercharge your firm's operations.
5) CEOs need to embed and reinforce innovation in their culture. I was accused by George Allen of having “…earned the apt reputation for being an unapologetic cheerleader for the MHIndustry at large!" Marty Lavin has said something similar. Well, guess what? CEO Magazine said this is part of the role of a good executive (okay, I'm not an exec at your company, but hopefully do some good cheer leading for the industry and thus aid the progress by those like you in it). But frankly, you need more than just a 'cheer leader.' You need a balance of cheering and reality checks. Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great , says you need need to look at the cold, hard, brutal facts and test what you want to do against those factual realities. Sound planning, plus cheer-leading, plus honest discussion, plus monitoring results and adapting as needed, that is what yields superior performance.
6) To innovate means to take risks but these risks can be managed and mitigated. We tell our clients that all marketing is test marketing. Something works well in marketing and sales in IL, WI or TX, can it work in CA, FL or NY too? It sure can, but you may need to adapt it some. When you know what to look for, you can manage those needed tweaks to speed successful implementation.
If you are managing, selling or marketing the exact same way as you were 10, 15 or 20 years ago, well, you aren't going to get the results that you should.
If you think that 'well, it worked that way before,' that may be true. But Ford Motor doesn't build the same cars the same way as when Henry Ford started his fabled firm. Times change. Methods change. Don't wait for some 'good old days' to return. They won't. Adapt or die. That's business.
You, your firm and your association needs to look at ways to adapt creatively to today's environment.
Are you synergizing with others? Are you using a combination of inside and outside talent, to make sure you are getting the best results? Volume auto retailers often bring in outside sales coaching talent, why? Most big auto retailers already have a good sales manager. Why go outside, when they have someone inside doing the job? Fair questions! Because 'new eyes' are necessary to spot things your internal staff is bound to miss. It is like the cobweb in the corner of your room. You don't see it, but the new face does.
As noted before, are you reading, discussing, analyzing ways to improve your performance?
A company that performs just 1% better every week, at the end of a year will roughly increase performance 167.8%. It doesn't take a huge leap.
The same principle applies for associations. Ask execs and board members, ask yourselves, how can we help boost our members results, just 1% a week? Using the national numbers, if we boosted our sales from a projected 63,000 +/- for 2012, we'd leap past 105,000 shipments in 2013. In two years, it would yield 281.5% growth, or 177,345 new homes shipped. All from 1% improvement a week.
Think about it. More profits for members. More revenue for associations. More incentives for members to stay or join.
How do you drive innovation? You have to take each of those first 1% baby steps. Then repeat.
Take a page from Nike and Just do it. ##
PS: Check our many Exclusive and Red Hot Featured Articles for September and see the
other new stories and 'Purely Political' cartoons there.
L. A. "Tony" Kovach
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Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right. – Henry Ford
