Get Your Organization to Behave Like a Startup - Part 2

For those of you that found the first part of this series intriguing, Part 2 explains the conditions where AC2T may be the right lever to use.

One of the challenges in established organizations is innovation.  With processes, procedures, and culture revolving around a company’s core products and services, enabling creative thinking is often more evolutionary than it is disruptive.  With the velocity of change and the emergence of new entrants on a continuous basis, companies are often faced with having to be self-disruptive as a matter of survival.  Getting leaders, teams, and employees to ‘think outside the box’ is easier said then done.  In fact, even when encouraged to be creative, employees often resort to familiar methods of problem-solving and critical thinking they are more accustomed to.  The more established the team, the more likely that entrenched thinking will dominate the approach to solving problems and coming up with new products and services.  The following statements are typical in organizations that have become stuck:

A major trap organizations fall into is groupthink.  This is particularly true in organizations with incredibly strong culture.  It’s amazing to discover that it doesn’t take very long for a new employee to embrace a company’s environment and lose their objectivity; culture is an incredibly powerful force that shapes attitudes and behaviors in a surprisingly short period of time.  Suddenly, you find yourself in situations where there is little or no dissenting perspective and you have entire teams absolutely convinced they have the right answer.  Such strength of consensus is often confused with confidence.  Where you have teams (or entire companies) heavily invested in their legacy or heritage products/systems/solutions, the prospect of disruption is a powerful innovation deterrent.  This is precisely why the AC²T model is designed to shield team members from the crowd and culture long enough to surface new ideas and cultivate them enough to determine viability.

In addition, organizations can often become perplexed when faced with a growing string of failures and/or losses.  Having been successful in the past following a prescribed approach, they have difficulty understanding why customers suddenly find their offering less desirable.  One symptom of this attitude is when you find employees blaming the competition for their loss.  For example, you might have heard someone declare they had lost because the competition “bought in” or the customer is “naïve” to believe that another solution will meet their needs.  When failure or loss is met with excuses and blame, this is another signal that innovation stagnation has taken hold.

AC²T therefore is best suited when an organization has one or more of the following warning signs:

·      Seasoned team unwilling to encourage and embrace dissenting opinions, particularly when it comes to how the company goes to market and what product/service mix they offer.

·      A long heritage of success accompanied with established legacy solutions that have been declared “off limits” to innovation or change.

·      Blaming or excuses when faced with loss or failure targeted toward the competition and/or customer.

 Part 3 in this series will outline the principles and key features that make an AC2T effort successful.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.