Leaders In the Know

Five Things Leaders Can Do To Foster Great Ideas and Move Them Forward

Why do companies with a lot of great ideas don't get great results?

In a very thought-provoking blog post entitled Ideation vs. Innovation, the authors build on management guru Peter Drucker's observation: "Creativity does not automatically lead to actual innovation."

The gist is this. Within organizations there are plenty of creative people generating plenty of great ideas. But great ideas without great implementation don't necessarily lead to great results or true innovation.

Who could disagree?

The authors make some interesting observations that I'd like to take further.

"In an encouraging environment almost anyone can come up with good ideas."  Well, it's optimistic, anyway.  I can't comment on the brain power or ability to "think outside the box" of your typical employee.  But too many companies believe that encouraging good ideas means having a suggestion box or not calling somebody a jerk when they speak out of turn or disagree with the "ranking guy (or woman)"  in a meeting. In addition to creativity, it takes courage and diplomacy to raise a good - but unpopular - idea.  A lot to ask of "almost anyone."

"Great, original ideas require more than talk. They require constructive action."  They certainly do: a good idea without action behind it is just a fond memory. But all too often we business people drive to implementation too fast - or too slow. Either can kill a good idea. And either can lead to mistaking a bad idea for a good one.  Two resources which often fall short would help solve this problem: competency in critical thinking and time to think.

I agree with the authors' conclusion that the scarce people are those who have the experience, know-how and staying power to assemble, organize and coordinate all the elements required to produce innovation.

So how do we get more of them?

I'd like to suggest five things leaders can do.

1. Make sure that those who have experience, knowledge, abilities and critical thinking skills are able to to help others to develop and apply them - regardless of rank or reporting relationship. 
2. Learn how to take advantage of the benefits that social media brings to surface, discard, improve upon and nurture ideas within organizations. 
3. Do a better job vetting good ideas before they die on the vine.
4. Engage, equip and energize people to turn great ideas into action and results.
5. Recognize achievements in a personally meaningful way

Any others you'd like to add to the list?

Seven Performance Indicators Build Reputation

On Forbes.com today, Charles Fombrun, chairman of a group called the Reputation Institute  reports that corporate stakeholders attach importance to seven key indicators of performance: product quality, innovation, financial results, citizenship, leadership, workplace and governance. Further, a 1% increase in reputation produces a 1% increase in stakeholder support and a 1% increase in market value.   

It's not good enough to be strong in one and weak in another; competing interests cancel each other out.

He  illustrates the point by contrasting the reputation of  Johnson & Johnson with that of AIG.

A related article reports on the Institute's study of 600 companies internationally, which forms the basis for these conclusions.  You can check out the findings on the  Top 200 List. A separate list shows how the top 153 American companies fared.

It's impossible to maintain a positive reputation when inordinant attention is paid to shareholder value on a quarterly basis. This myopic focus means that those with a vested interest in the long term - customers, partners, employees (and as we've come to learn the hard way, everyone else in the economy) - loses. 

With the exception of financial results, six of the seven performance indicators are affected by how they are measured by influencers rather than hard numbers.  

Influencers with authority shape our perception of a company's reputation.

The difference between what "authority" means online  is very different than what it means offline, Online, authority is measured by links, hits and views of a website, while offline it refers to a person's expertise and experience. 

The same is true of "influence".  Online influence is measured in terms of how far a person's ideas or opinions spread over the internet, how long people pay attention to them. Offline, it's another matter entirely. 

Because of the reach, scope and speed of the internet, companies are right to be concerned about maintaining a positive reputation online.

How CIOs Demonstrate Leadership in Web 2.0

Charlie and I were co-panelists, along with Chris Anstey of GlaxoSmithKline and moderator Berny Wright of Agilysys, at the CIO Forum & Executive IT Summit in King of Prussia, PA on April 16, 2009.

Click here to view our slide presentation.

Companies are at very different stages of how they use Web 2.0 and social media technologies and tools. Managers and employees are all over the lot: some use these tools as they would the telephone, while others are a little skeptical of the value.

We rely on the web in every facet of  our daily lives - so much so that the boundaries between our work and personal lives are not as clear as they used to be.  We forget that we're still seeing the infancy of the web from a management perspective. 

We are only beginning to understand the best ways to figure out which tool works best for which purpose and how to measure the result.  They aren't sure how to reconcile a myriad of corporate concerns, not the least of which is around security and bad press. 

Managers brought up in the traditional role of organizing, planning and control need to be trained on how to manage in the new realities of an open, transparent, agile and empowered web-enabled workplace.

CIOs have an important leadership role to play. Their knowledge can help their business partners become educated consumers of web-based products.  They can help guide their companies from experimentation and ad hoc use to strategic use of web technologies and tools.

Obama's New Tech Czar May Need Body Armor

President Obama has appointed a new Technology Czar, Vivek Kundra.

O'Reilly's site has the transcript of the Federal CIO in his own words.  Business Week also published a nice article today, Obama's New Techn Czar.

Both articles talk about Kundra's experience bringing YouTube, Wikipedia and Twitter to DC government while in his old job. Can he bring these tools to the federal government?

Can Mr. Kundra get federal agencies to start sharing computers and information? Can he use his influence over their budgets to get them to play nicely in the sandbox? A former CIO of the Dept. of Defense seems to think it will be tough, drawing the analogy of an "orchestra without a director."

I went to read the comments to find out what others thought about the BW piece.  Big mistake.

Of the 34 comments posted at that time, 23 had absolutely nothing to say about technoloy and government. Heck, they had nothing to say about technology. Instead, these nay-sayers focused their criticism on Kundra's Indian ethnicity. They muse about whether he is here on an H1-B visa; whether he is a US citizen. Some offered nasty-gram references to outsourcing. Others were just plain derogatory.

I spend my time working with organizations who are wrestling with all sorts of challenges related to Web 2.o. Private industry faces many of the same issues as the government.  They are not prepared for what comes with Web 2.0: transparency, agility, user centricity, loss of control, collaboration, openess, information sharing. These are not things most managers are comfortable with.  They know they have to adapt, pressured by the millenials and the marketplace.

If the comments on the BW piece are any indication, apparently we have our work  cut out for us.

Having started my career at the New York State Division of Human Rights and  to have spent 25 years as a corporate champion for diversity, perhaps I'm overly sensitive.

But the reality is that the challenges we faced working through organizational change brought about the introduction of the p.c., globalization, workplace flexibility and diversity are very similiar to the challenges we face today with Web 2.0.

The derisive reaction to the BW piece on Kundra shows just how difficult this transformation is.  Our new tech czar doesn't have an army.  He comes armed with innovative thinking, a willingness to experiment ,and a technology vision his boss can believe in.  

Let's give the new maestro a chance to make some beautiful music. 

A Brave New World in the Web World? Skittles?

The economy may be crashing and burning around us, but the web world is all a-buzz about the new Skittles homepage.

There are so many folks focusing on how the Web 2.0 and social media are used for marketing, I don't typically feel the need to chime in.  Charlene Li has a terrific blog entry on this.

The short story is that the Skittles home page has been completely redone - pulling no stops on Web 2.0 features.  Flash is so yesterday. This is a site designed for a social media junkie. 

The site changes to feature the various web channels the company uses to connect the brand with its customers. So when Charlene posted about this on Monday, the home page featured the search results for Skittles on Twitter. The idea it changes daily to feature its presence on Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like right now, featuring its Wikipedia page:

The reason I was so intrigued to check this out is that I was curious as to what the broader implications of this innovative marketing strategy might be.

Skittles is facing, head on, perhaps the largest fear companies have of  Web 2.0: exposing themselves to whatever users might chose to say about their brand. The good, the bad, the four-letter. Unfiltered. Uncensored.

Until now, this risk was primarily limited to user comments on third party sites; unsavory comments on the corporate site could be moderated or bleeped.  Not on their home page for all the world to see.

I'm not sure how many candy companies (that is, not of the X-rated variety) require you to give them your birthday and to acknowledge that they are not responsible for the content on their own home page and that the content may be unsuitable for younger viewers.

Is this over the top or the future best practice in brand management?

Do your customers really own your brand, as Charlene suggests? If so, then Skittles is to be congratulated for putting that to the test.

What are the implications for organizations?

If  the external brand is consistent with the internal brand, then it would follow that the employees own the culture of the company.  This would be a great victory for empowerment. And leaders will need to restrain themselves from defending against the unvarnished perceptions voiced (and published) by employees.

Transparency in surgery: Tweeting from the OR

The next time you sign consent for a surgical procedure you might want to take a close look at the form to see if it also asks for your ok to Tweet about the procedure from the operating room.

Dr. Craig Rogers has paved the way for surgeons to create a virtual learning community, demonstrating a creative use of the social media tool Twitter. The reason he gave for wanting to do this was to share with others that a kidney tumor could be removed without removing the whole kidney.

Things didn't go exactly as planned, demonstrating that it takes preparation, confidence and a certain risk taking to do this. And while it all worked out just fine in the end, unlike House or E.R., there are no second takes and editing.

My daughter, who is a med student, will think this is terrific. She loves surgery but knows she's got to be useful or stay out of the way. This would enable her to follow not only what's being said in the OR, but to find out what other tweeters thought as the procedure was progressing.

You may be wondering how Dr. Rogers got the idea in the first place  From a colleague, who tweeted as a patient during his own varicose vein surgery. He wanted to feel like his family and friends were there with him during surgery. Sounds good, but maybe too CrackBerry-ish for me.

Think of the territory this opens up for the medical malpractice bar... 

Web 2.0: A Sea Change but the Fundamentals Endure

Jeff Greenfeld had a fabulous piece today on Sunday Morning called Media Is Changing, But Some Things Endure.

We couldn't agree more. The maturity of the web and convergence of tools IS a sea change - in how we get our news, information and stay abreast of our family and friends as we move through our daily lives.  The PDA has become a one stop shop for just about everything from ordering a pizza to planning our next vacation.

At Cognetics, we also believe that this sea change is occuring right now in the workplace. We may not feel it yet but it's moving at a rapid clip. Web 2.0 is not a spectator sport in the business world: you gotta be in it to win at it.  

But just as the fundamentals of media itself haven't changed (we still want it to be accurate, complete, useful, well produced, entertaining, etc.), the web is not going to change the fundamentals of the business world. The bottom line is  you still need to manage profit and loss, continue to innovate, and do the right things for customers, employees, society and investors.

What do you think?

We'd like you to know:
Charlie and I are launching a new program we created for the  American  Management Association to help leaders understand what Web 2.0 is all about, consider how t0 make the most of its potential (especially to help us weather the economic downturn) and create what we call a Web 2.0-Friendly Culture. We hope you'll check out Making Sense of Web 2.0: Leveraging Social Media in Your Organization (Seminar #2190).

Final Word on the Presidential BlackBerry

We were so delighted to hear that the President got to keep his BlackBerry, even if he had to trade his in for a super-secure "limited edition" and limit the number of people who get the number. I'm glad to hear that Joe Biden got one too and assume they've got each other in as their top five friends.

Although we now know how it all ended, Charlie and I were asked for our two cents by our local business paper U.S. 1.

IBM's "Beehive" Social Network Creates More than Buzz

If you're interested in hearing first-hand about how IBM's private social network - dubbed Beehive - here's a two-page PDF worth reading.  Unfortunately, no stats are included.

IBM Research launched Beehive to study four issues related to social software in the workplace as depicted in the model below.

What they found won't surprise social network aficionados but it may surprise corporate executives.

• Employees use the intenal social network to get to know colleagues better on a personal level and to check out new people.
  
  My take: Getting to know colleagues is tough when you're racing from meeting to meeting, telecommuting and working on a virtual team. Econmic conditions have made this even more challenging as travel and gatherings have gone by the way-side and chit-chat revolves around the latest layoffs.  The social network fills a huge need employees at all levels have to feel connected to other people in order to also feel connected to the organization.

• Employees use Beehive to connect with people they don't know. On a public site  like Facebook, people connect with "friends" they already know or may have met. 
  
  My take: This has enormous implications for companies. Social networks will inevitably break down barriers between rank, function, business unit or geography. Social networks have accomplished in days and weeks what outward bound and team-building trust activities have attempted for years.

• Employees use the internal social network to find out about career opportunities. 
  
  My take:  The days of corporate loyalty and paternalism are a mere memory.  Employees use social networks to get ahead. Recruiters say the best way to find a job is to network. Increasing your network can only improve your chances. It's a natural. I'd like to add a process improvement: use the social network to publicize openings and link to the job posting system.

• Employees use the network to get other people interested in their ideas and projects.
  
  My take: Finally, something employees have been waiting for: a company-sanctioned way to not have to rely on your boss to promote you or your ideas.  Will the social network move beyond the virtual water cooler to the virtual golf course?

All this sounds great for employees. But what about the company?

The company benefits even more.  The IBM researchers report that employees who are more actively engaged in the network care more than those who aren't. They're more willing to contribute to the company. They're more willing to meet new people and to expand their network globally. They're able to more easily access expertise. Sounds like a win-win to me.

In case you are wondering, employees were not given detailed procedures or prohibitions on content for their personal Beehive page.

On Leadership

The Washington Post has launched a new site On Leadership. It's worth a look.

The hook for the site is a "one stop shop" to find out what top thinkers think about a leadership issue of the week.  What a week to get started - what with the three auto maker musketeers and Rod Blagojevich to choose from. 

Another feature is a video that's a series of minute or two clips on leadership. So you can look at one or all; a title slide makes it easy to find a clip you might want to look at again if you missed it by going through your email or cleaning off your desk while watching.

This week's video is of Fed Ex CEO Fred Smith, who leads 300,000+ employees. One of the things he talks about is the importance of  fairness. He cares about it so much that the company posts a Guarantee of Fairness. Any employee who thinks a management decision isn't fair can get it reviewed by someone  higher up in the ranks - or by peers.  See the clip for more.

There are a couple of other features about this site that are particularly appealing to me. First, the panel is a diverse group of thought leaders - including my Wharton colleague, Mike Useem. (OK, I know I'm biased; but when Mike talks, I listen.)

The panel's question page is set up so that it's easy to quickly scan the one liners that sum up each panelist's opinion and link to the rest of their individual blog post.

In case you were wondering, the auto makers won. Maybe they'll get to the Illinois governor next week. 

The question: What More Could Auto Execs Have Done?  Some responses were along the line of "throw the bums out," others thought they should have come  to Washington with detailed plan in hand. Some may even surprise you... like the ethics expert and lawyer who says, "Executives shouldn't work for nothing: They need incentives to meet their new commitments." Huh?

But Barry Posner's observation struck a cord for me: 

They brought to the table a vision of the past,
rather than some sense of imagination about the future.

Words for all of us to live by.

Fed Ex's Smith (talking about self-discipline as a leadership trait) speaks of how hard it is to pick the right people, give them authority to act and then let them run with it - even if you don't agree with them. Something I really believe in.

But that got me thinking about what more the auto execs could have done. (And maybe the financial execs as well.) 

Empowerment is a wonderful thing. But shouldn't the leader have the discipline to seriously question faulty thinking, self-serving decisions and lack of imagination about the future that puts their organization at risk?

Whether it's selling subprime mortgages or bigger and bigger SUVs, it appears that some leaders who should have known better put their bonus ahead of  their judgment.

Social Media: More mindset than media

Charlie and I are developing a course for American Management Association called Making Sense of Web 2.0: Levaraging Social Media in Your Organization.  (The consensus was that social computing - while perhaps more accurate  than social media - sounds too geeky.)  But regardless of  what you call it, the modern web is mostly about mindset.

Web 2.0 is familiar turf for marketers, project managers, consultants and developers. There are many, many fantastic examples of how it's used with internal and external audiences.

But when you cut past the flash, Web 2.0 works best when we stop selling and telling and engage in listening and learning.

It sounds so simple: we need to treat customers as people with something valuable to say. We need to treat employees as responsible adults. But how many organizations actually do? After all, there aren't any extra "Hay points" in it. And it could get us in trouble.  Not much of an incentive there for the average corporate soldier.

You may want to look into Pfizerpedia (Pfizer's version of wikipedia). You can read about it on a number of sites. I'd like to suggest Karl Kapp's blog. Considering the sensitivities of large corporations, with signficant investment in intellectual property, in a highly regulated industry in which compliance dominates behavior,  accustomed to strictly following processes and protocol -embracing Web 2.0 is nothing short of a major shift in mindset.  Even though I've given away the plot, I still highly recommend the movie:

meet Jessica

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web_2.0 enterprise_2.0)

The current economic crisis may reveal that companies really see Web 2.0 as a "nice to have" rather than the necessity it is for "keeping the lights on." If so, those companies may have snazzy Web 2.0 sites - but not a Web 2.0 mindset.