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Too often, new product initiatives fizzle and fail not because of a flawed research framework or outdated design tools, but rather from an organization that isn't invested in the work itself..
You’ve just been hired onto BigCo’s new innovation team. Congratulations!
You’re woo’d by the opportunity to disrupt and transform a sleepy, backwards industry. You’re promised the ways of agile, lean, breaking things, and failing fast. And, most likely, you’re welcomed with a fresh set of Post It notes and Sharpies on your first day. You’re feeling good.
Your first few months go well. You enjoy the wave of early momentum and optimism as you meet folks from around the organization. You get good at delivering the Why Innovation presentation to various departments, and you soon can recite the Blockbuster vs. Netflix case study in your sleep. Jobs to be done….ZzzZZzz….Jobs to be done…..ZZzZzz
As you dig deeper into the business, its needs, and its opportunities, you feel spikes of enthusiasm for possible products, projects, or other initiatives. A platform for this, the Uber of that. You’re in conversations with the innovation consultancies that lay claim to the design of Apple’s first mouse and the Swiffer. And you’ve maybe even kicked off a research discovery engagement with one of them.
But, eventually, the sheen begins to wear off. A year passes and you look back to realize, well, your team hasn’t really achieved anything. Nothing built, nothing in the market, few minds changed. And, certainly, nothing “disrupted”.
You’ve built more Powerpoints than prototypes, focused more on stakeholders than sales, and been so caught up fighting with the Profitability Police that progress has felt elusive.
And it’s not for lack of effort or skill. You’ve poured so much energy into keeping your optimism and enthusiasm high, acknowledging that change takes time. You consider yourself naturally optimistic and were taught to never give up.
But you feel like you’ve reached failure; a slow, draining, unsexy type of failure that the VC blogs seem to omit. An agglomeration of ten thousand no’s, absent leadership, unanswered emails, and promised-but-forgotten budget commitments.
What’s the root of this failure? Your skills? Maybe. A difficult gatekeeper or two? Perhaps.
But, I have a different hypothesis:
I’ll venture to say that your organization doesn’t care about your work.
One more time:
Your 👏 organization 👏 does 👏 not 👏 care 👏 about 👏 your 👏 work.
I’m wrong, you say?
Great! I hope so.
But, prove it.
Too often, new product initiatives fizzle and fail not because of a flawed research framework or outdated design tools, but rather from an organization that does not actually care about the work and, therefore, does not take any of the actions you take when you care about something.
It’s nothing personal and it’s likely not happening out of malice. It’s a pretty common pattern within organizations attempting to keep up with the innovation theatre of their peers and even the ones who really do want to create change.
Having awareness of this reality will help you identify the boring, foundational stuff that you need to figure out to make the more interesting stuff actually be impactful. You also are able to ask yourself if you’re in the best environment or not given your professional priorities.
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Years ago, I was a strong believer in the possibility and impact of guerilla tactics as part of a corporate innovation team. (Read: guerilla tactics = attempts at making progress in an environment whose entire incentive structure was constructed to specifically make the types of projects we were working on not be successful).
The rogue storyline was attractive, energizing, exciting:
The small, underfunded team of forward-looking and enlightened mavericks defy a legacy corporate culture of stagnancy and tradition; begging, borrowing, and stealing their way to stealthily developing and launching the company’s first billion dollar product in record time.
I specifically recall being so excited about the opportunity to make a surprising amount of guerilla impact when I attended an innovation conference just a few months into the job.
The Keynote Speaker shared a list of 10 Commandments of Corporate Innovation. He started with, well, the First Commandment:
I didn’t listen to the rest of his speech. “It Starts at the Top” went directly against my reality of “It’s Starting at the Bottom because The Top Doesn’t Really Seem to Care”. I felt serious cognitive dissonance and ignored the rest of the address.
I knew my CEO and the leadership team wasn’t exhibiting the behaviors that came with the “It Starts at the Top” Commandment. The first commandment. The, uh, most important one?
But I was so confident in my own team’s efficacy and potential for monumental change - even without leadership support - that I ignored it. Over the years, however, I’ve changed my tune.
Before I go on, let me be clear: innovation and new product teams can be successful in difficult environments without much leadership support. It’s possible, and you may even get a lot done. But most of the time, I expect you’ll run into serious frustration and stagnancy.
The maverick storyline is still energizing, and I think determined intrepreneurs can do some great work. But I now have a healthy respect for corporate path dependency and the power of legacy incentive structures.
I’ve come to learn that If the organization doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter how much you do.
Luckily, it’s easy to figure out if your organization cares and if you have the foundations to be successful.
If your organization cares about your work, the following will hold true:
Not only will this hold true, but you’ll be able to show me proof.
Proof:
Proof:
Proof:
If you go through those and can’t find proof, it might suggest that you need to do some more digging and ask more questions.
This exercise isn’t meant to be defeating - but rather a pulse check to ensure that your purpose is aligned with the organization’s purpose. When this happens, you will experience so much more enjoyment and progress.
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