Bidiversity

I have had the pleasure of getting to know Jeff Murphy over the last couple of months. Jeff is an executive director at Johnson & Johnson where he is working with improvement methodologies and business innovation.

At a meeting a couple of months ago, we got into a discussion on key leadership behaviors and decisions with regards to innovation leadership and culture. Jeff works with this at Johnson & Johnson and he has made the following observations on what business leaders who are seeking to improve their organization’s innovation capability and capacity should do.

They should:

• make innovation a TRUE business priority  – encourage cross-functional collaboration on innovation.
• make innovation part of everyone’s performance review. Recognize publically and rewardappropriately.
• view failures as learning opportunities. Celebrate and recognize successes and failures from innovation.
• put the emphasis on questioning, not telling. Your style and type of questions matter.
• allow flexibility to explore new possibilities. Collaborate inside and outside the organization.
• hire and value a diversity of thinking styles, experiences, perspectives and expertise.
• purchase or develop an idea management system that captures ideas and encourages people to build on and evaluate new possibilities.
• establish a seed fund for early innovation work.
• recognize and communicate that innovation is a long-term business process that needs to be cultivated, just like any other business process.

Besides these observations, Jeff also shared some of the questions he asks within Johnson & Johnson as they work to develop an even better innovation culture. Jeff has divided these questions into three categories: Culture, Capability and Cash.

Questions on Culture:

• What is your business case for improving at innovation?
• Who is/will be the senior management innovation champion?
• Who is/will be the deployment leader?
• How are key innovation management behaviors being demonstrated? Communicated?
• What is your company’s innovation archetype or style?
• What communication vehicles are being used? Who owns this?
• How is innovation ingrained in your rewards and recognition system?
• How is risk and failure handled?
• How do you measure and monitor your culture and engagement?
• What management and staff training has been conducted/planned?

Questions on Capability:

• What is your 3-year innovation deployment plan? How is it aligned with your strategic plan?
• How do you plan to balance Big I vs. Little I? What about internal vs. open innovation?
• What is your standard innovation framework or process?
• What training has been conducted for team leaders – and individuals? What percentage has been trained?
• How do you get deep customer and market insights?
• How are ideas submitted? Evaluated? Built upon? Tracked? Killed?
• How do you hire for creativity and innovation?
• What do you measure regarding capability?

Questions on Cash:

• What innovation projects have been chartered and funded? In what areas?
• What do you measure regarding value realized?
• What is your track record (past 2-5 years)?
• What are your 1-3 year goals?
• What is your risk adjusted innovation pipeline value?
• What areas of your innovation process are working well? Not working well?

Jeff and his team have developed an on-line Innovation Diagnostic Survey which quickly evaluates current conditions and performance around 75 key areas (including, Leadership, Strategy, Portfolio Management, Customer Focus, Culture, Innovation process, Training, and Metrics & Results) related to innovation. This tool provides executives with a prioritized roadmap for innovation performance improvement.

I hope the sharing of these insights from Johnson & Johnson provides you with some inspiration on the development of innovation leadership and culture within your company. It would be great to hear your comments and other insights as well.

Source: Stefan Lindegaard