We all know a culture of innovation can make a company wildly successful. But the growing challenge innovative organizations face is how to ensure enough attention is being paid to how to implement all the fabulous ideas
Innovation is complex. It usually involves large-scale and highly complex organizational change, with multiple inter-dependencies. The challenge of actually implementing all of these ideas is arguably just as difficult as the process of creating the innovation itself! So, where do you begin?
Becoming Change Adept
Organizations that are looking to survive and even thrive with an innovative culture need be “change-adept.” There are three protocols needed for an organization to be truly change adept.
The Importance of Leadership Commitment
Once an organization has process improvement, project management and change management protocols in place, there is one additional requirement to be change adept. And to be honest, it might be the most important one. A change adept organization must have leaders who recognize that having a good idea or strategy is only a small part of their accountability.
Leaders must also provide the needed commitment to implement to full value realization. This is the cascade of active, visible Sponsors who are Expressing, Modeling and Reinforcing the desired new behaviors associated with the change, down and across the enterprise. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, this cascade of Sponsorship is the single most important factor in swift and successful implementation.
Making Innovation Stick
So, what does it take to move from having a great idea to implementation success? While it would seem logical to apply continuous improvement first to identify the issues, use project management next to manage it and then change management as a bolt on at the end to address implementation I can tell you from experience this is not going to work. It is much better to integrate the three processes from the beginning.
The AIM Change Management Methodology was built with this concept in mind. It was developed so that its deliverables and knowledge areas can be easily inserted at key intersection points in an operational excellence as well as a project management plan. Here are 4 ways AIM can help ensure your innovation project is a success:
Coming up with innovative, new ideas is what keeps organizations one step ahead of their competitors. But, remember a great solution that is poorly implemented will lead nowhere. Becoming change adept by blending operational excellence, project management and a structured change management process (like AIM) is the key to innovation AND implementation success!