Part III: Necessity of Breaking Silos and Integration for a True Culture of Innovation
Building on Part I and Part II (last 2 blog posts), in addition to the holistic transformation which we need to make, we also need to look at breaking barriers.
Let me share a real example. A recent client asked me to help them in building a Culture of Innovation. However, they only wanted a small subset of the engineering team to go through the transformation. I had to pause and ask: “How can we transform your culture to a totally new culture which has about 80,000 people by working with ONLY a team of 20?” Furthermore, we at least should have a few groups represented, as engineering is just one component of the organization.
To meaningfully transform to a culture of innovation, a culture that can develop products, faster, broader and more effectively, it involves ALL groups. Yes, all the way to finance, the group who needs to fund prototype ideas!
Hence we need to break silos, integrate groups and more importantly leverage the enormous assets within a company, across all transformation levels.
In the same client scenario, we expanded the group to 100 instead of 20, brought in representatives from all key groups globally, began to look at innovation and product development for the first time, together with an innovation lens, and a year into the process we have identified pretty amazing product offerings – some quite outside of the box and most significantly leveraging the assets of the company, the people and intellectual property.
Oh, and let me not forget, the total icing on the cake is the inspiration factor. When the Change agents, Enablers and Drivers take innovation personally and seriously, and do so in an integrated manner, that is the only time that we can honestly say we are on the journey of creating a meaningful Culture of Innovation!
What do you think folks? How do you propose breaking the ‘silos’ in your company? What are your thoughts? As active members of the Culture of Disruption [insert CofD], if you don’t wonder, ask and mindfully disrupt, we will never innovate!
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