Innovation "Culture": Execution is more Important than Aspirations

Innovation Culture: we all want to be like Apple, or IDEO, Google, or W.L. Gore. As if it were that easy! No one wants to be slow, customer-indifferent, or uncreative, but the sad truth is that too many are! Why? How can it be that we all want something so badly, and yet so few achieve it?

My belief is that the problem starts with the very word "culture." It rolls off the tongue so easily, in nearly any language. When you use the word "culture", especially in relation to innovation, everyone nods in agreement -- it's an "easy sell," the universal panacea. Yet, the real problem is that the word "culture"means everything to everyone. It is so mysterious that none of us have any idea of what the other really means when they use the term, but we don't really care. We are all under the spell of becoming Apple, without questioning what it takes to get there.

For this reason, I truly hate the word "culture", and try to forbid its use in my classes. My former Driving Strategic Innovation program colleague Harvard Professor Rebecca Henderson once called "culture: an excuse for thinking." I agree! Instead, I believe that the word "culture" should describe "how we do things around here," or essentially typical group behavior. If that is true, then I also believe that such behavior is the outcome of managerial choices made within five realms:

1. the articulation of strategic vision (which should be both precise & liberating)


2. the talent & skills that are necessary to achieve this vision


3. the best way to organize our talent & skills to achieve our vision


4. the processes that we can employ to give our talent a higher probability of success, and


5. the values, measures & rewards by which we inspire, evaluate and compensate our talent.

Almost all managerial choice involves one of these five realms and together they determine how our people behave --i.e, they determine our "culture." The model was first proposed by my former IMD-colleague, Jay Galbraith, and is best represented by his star model (shown above). I think of the star as a sort of "steering" device. By "tuning" any of the five "levers" I can activate motion in my organization in one direction or another. To really steer the organization in the direction that I wish, I need to consider "tuning" all of them, and in such a way (and at the same time) -- alignment -- that the organization moves in the direction, and at the speed, that we aspire. This is what culture should be about. The conscious and thoughtful result of managerial choices; not mystery!

The Mindless Pursuit of Customer Indifference

Everybody loves the customer! At least, that's what I'm consistently told. Why, then, does it not feel that way to me, when I'm a customer? Why are my customer experiences a seemingly endless stream of mediocre performances? My hunch is that it is attributable to the difficulties involved in moving managerial conversations beyond desired outcomes.

How many times have you heard senior-level managers proclaim that their ambition is to be: "number 1;" "the provider of choice;" "the preferred partner;" etc., etc.? It goes on all the time, but what do these slogans really mean? Nothing, in and of themselves. They are dreams, but more important they are the outcomes of more fundamental managerial actions that must be taken and coordinated if these outcomes are to be achieved. Without taking the conversation to the next, deeper, level, and specifying those other actions more precisely, it is left unsaid how, exactly, we are going to reach these dreams. If the hows are not specified, the paths to achieving our dreams remain abstract and implicit; and, all too often, unfulfilled. Achievement of organizational dreams -- the fulfillment of corporate strategy -- requires the leader to go beyond clichés and address the real nuts & bolts details of which managerial choices are going to change, and how we're going to change them, in order to achieve the desired outcomes. Don't settle for mere outcomes in managerial conversations!! Always drill down deeper to find the hows that will make these outcomes achieveable. Good intentions are not enough; as George Bernard Shaw so famously observed, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

What I believe is needed is an understanding of the "deep competencies," or deep masteries, that are necessary if the desired outcomes are ever to be achieved. Takahiro Fujimoto talks about this in his recent book Competing to Be Really, Really Good, which explains Japan's successes in automobile competition, as a function of such deep competencies. One of the most useful ways of addressing this issue, and in my experience the one absolutely vital tool in forcing conversations to go beyond mere outcomes, is Jay Galbraith's "star", which ties managerial choices regarding: strategy, people & skills, organization, processes, and measures and rewards, together. I find this an absolutely essential part of a managerial "toolkit."

You Don't Always Get What You Measure

We’re all familiar with the old adage that “No matter what you do; you get what you measure!” In fact, I must admit that I’ve relied on this a lot as sort of a glib "throw-away" comment on any number of managerial conversations. Too bad it’s not true! In fact, you won’t always get what you measure if you don’t change the other dimensions of the Galbraith Star, or McKinsey’s 7S, or whatever framework you rely upon to think about execution. I write this while attending a corporate workshop that could result in a fundamental rethinking of how one multinational corporation operates, and what’s especially fascinating to me is how ready people are to consider changes in what they measure, but how resistant they are to think about the other concomitant changes that are necessary to allow people to really take full advantage of the promise offered by the new measures. And, it’s not only structural changes that are resisted, but virtually all others. The lesson is quite clear: you don’t always get what you measure, and, in fact, you reduce the probability of getting what you measure, unless you consider changing all of the other variables that are included in the organizational performance equation, including: the skills and styles of the people you are measuring, the way you organize talent to fit the measures, the process and platforms you put in place to make sure that the measurement is achievable and inspiring, and a clear, understandable business strategy that provides meaning to the measures. Only with such considerations, do you stand a reasonable chance of achieving what we all have promised in the past: actually getting what you measure.