Better Product Managers, and Product Management

It’s OK to say you belong or reside within and have an innovation team within a corporate/business environment. Innovation is not a dirty word. - Carl Knibbs, Cup of Innovation, Anyone?

I agree!  I’ve seen two reasons why “innovation teams” are poorly regarded within larger organizations.  Actually, they apply to pretty much any type of “special task force/skunkworks” team:

1. Lack of internal credibility, i.e. the “what the heck does the INNOVATION team do? Yeah, I’d like to be an innovator instead of having real work to do” reaction
2. Silo syndrome, i.e. “the rest of us don’t need to be creative, we have an innovation team to handle that.”

Lack of Internal Credibility

This usually springs from the best of intentions.   Everyone else is saddled with meetings and process and existing projects – let’s give this team some breathing room so they can really focus on creating something great!

There’s often a lack of defined deliverables – after all, if you’re experimenting, you can’t guarantee what will work.  But when a team — any team — isn’t producing results of some kind, they’re going to be internally badmouthed.  When it’s time for them to advance a genuinely innovative and exciting project, they won’t have the credibility needed to work effectively with other internal teams.

A couple years ago, I was on a project with a large corporate organization who had an “innovation team”, and one of its leaders — we’ll call him “Clint” — was part of our cross-functional group.  Clint was tasked with exploring new technologies, and he did so enthusiastically.  In meetings where I could see his laptop screen, he was enthusiastically tweeting, blogging, and playing with various Web2.0 apps.

“We should really use a Flickr-style interface for that feature,” he’d say, breaking into a conversation that had been underway for 20 minutes.
Cool idea – but no business case or usability enhancement justification for it.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t part of his job.  He was tasked with “exploring”, not “delivering”, and as a result no one was really sure what he did.

The thing is, no one should be “innovating” 100% of the time.  It’s not even possible!

Solution #1: Define deliverables up-front.  Ideally, the leader of the team should reach out to other groups to find out what format would be most convenient for them.  A casual brown-bag presentation is a good bet – with a simple format of “here’s what we learned, here’s what happened, here’s what’s worth keeping” and some time for Q and A.  Sending out a “formatted for executives” PowerPoint deck or a long email is probably going to be less popular.

Solution #2: Ask other cross-functional teams what THEY need.   Does engineering wish they could get customer feedback on integrating a new technology? Does marketing wish they could do an ad hoc demographic survey?   Taking care of some other teams’ pet projects may only require a few hours – but it can be enormously helpful in getting their buy-in on future projects.

Silo Syndrome

Sometimes this is the fault of management: “If you have an idea, send it to the innovation team.” (subtext: No, you don’t get the fun of continuing to think about it, and you probably won’t get any credit for it if it turns out to be valuable.)

Sometimes this is the fault of the day-to-day folks: “We don’t have time to think about that idea, that’s what the innovation team is for.  Now let’s get back to doing things exactly the way we always do them!”

Either way, talk about demoralizing!  The point of introducing skunkworks teams is to try and spread new ideas and enthusiasm, not to tamp it down in everyone else.

The innovation team needs to make their energy and get-it-done agenda contagious.

This can be tricky if the silo-ization is coming from upper management, but it’s part of the job.

Solution #1: Find some “insiders” who will keep you informed if they hear about interesting ideas being quashed in other teams.  (Project managers are often the notetakers and have a really good sense of this.)  Actively seek out the people with ideas and ask them about it.  It may not be feasible, but you want to send the message that you’re listening.

Solution #2: Talk to the people who are fighting to maintain the status quo and understand what their concerns are.  Often, their performance is judged based on metrics from doing things “the usual way”.   There’s no incentive for them to try something new, only a pretty good chance of them looking bad because of it.   Look for ways that you can mitigate that risk to them – maybe by minimizing change, maybe by taking responsibility for outcomes.

The skunkworks team needs to see themselves as partners – it’s almost a good cop/bad cop relationship.  You do things your way, we’ll try this other way – but we’re both working together towards a common goal.

As a product manager in startups, I’ve usually approached larger customers with this partnership approach.  You have the big revenues and the big customer base; we have more freedom to operate quickly and outside of procedure.  What rules do you want us to help you bend?

In my experience, it has often been doing “unofficial” survey research, user testing or customer interviews, quick prototyping, or checking out competitive products – and using that to kick off new ideas or approaches.  It could be anything.  The point is, you need an objective, a connection to the core business objectives, and a commitment to sharing results.  Doesn’t sound “innovative” enough?  Give it a try!

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