I have been having some great conversations with senior growth leaders following my Three Essential Ingredients for a Successful Growth Program webinar. What continues to excite and surprise me, is that by making the task of growth project creation simpler and more specific, it is releasing energy and starting conversations. (If you haven’t had time to take in the webinar, you can find an MP3 copy here).
When I speak to groups, I sometimes use the phrase, “the task of the growth leader is to do the work of testing the minority opinion to see if it is worthy of becoming the majority view.”
Let’s lean in to this statement today and talk about what’s really involved from the nascent insight to actually forming a project, when we set aside the jargon and get down to runway level.
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Every day in your firm or group, you or others around you are making observations of the way your products and services interact with the customer. Depending on the age and size of your firm, you are either very responsive to the customer or to the organization. (there are lots of reasons for this, mostly revolving around specialization in function and communication).
For today, let’s keep this bounded and talk about the path from insight to action.
The first step is to have individual insight. This occurs often on an individual level, and tracks across your mind with a weak tag attached. This is usually something like, “…that’s interesting and unexpected..” The first couple of times it happens, you don’t even consciously note it. Eventually it happens enough times that you write it down and begin exploring it within your own mind. Most pieces of insight stop here. Sometimes it occurs often enough that you begin to take repeated notes and start sketching relationships that you are observing. Once you commit it to paper, it may or may not find its way to the next level.
The second step in the journey is when two people begin to share their combined individual insights. This always involves a risk, with someone saying, “I noticed….” and sharing their personal observation. This represents a big step, and when two observations are shared, something magical happens – a third entity is formed that has elements of both your insight and your thought partner’s insight. This is important, because now there is a tiny piece of intellectual property that has a life of its own, and over time it may grow up to become something. Alternatively, it may go dormant to be picked up later or become simply lost to history.
Let’s assume that this is one of those persistent observations that begins to grow in significance and is something that you begin to share with other people. The third step is when it gets a name. This is a really big step as it legitimizes the idea, and individuates it into something worthy of its own identity and container. It also allows others to become part of the conversation, and quickly moves people’s thoughts to the concept and their connection to it.
The fourth step is when the concept begins to find sponsorship. This is usually a subtle shift, when the thought leader has found the confidence to test it with someone who has influence over the resource base who can accelerate realization of the nascent concept. Once this step occurs, the first formal test of the validity of the concept quickly follows. If the concept is able to gain the sponsorship upon its first formal disclosure, then more specific and detailed evaluation and development will quickly follow.
The fifth step in our model is when the concept has acquired the sponsorship and stature to be fully vetted for a phase one evaluation. During this step, all the necessary team members take a look at the full business case to the firm and the benefits to the customer. Once this step is undertaken, it will lead to one of three outcomes: not yet, never or let’s do it.
This five step process plays out thousands of times in the life of an enterprise. The early, early stages of this process are subtle, yet very important. The “micro” culture is vitally important to have a “creative firm.” In firms that struggle, “thought islands” form and are abandoned in their early stages before they hit the formal metrics of the firm.
So how does this apply to growth leaders and their senior sponsors?
Here are three takeaways:
- For enterprises that get stuck in big idea mode (only have top-down driven events), they very likely have a culture that sets the early filter in their teams too high. When I work with groups, this is rarely understood until it is named and brought forward for conversation. The same challenge function that creates high performance on an existing product creates a “kill zone” for new ideas. Since most people dismiss their observations early, the really insightful micro events never surface.
- These “micro” creative events form best in diverse environments. If you don’t specifically work hard to break the boundaries by holding advanced inventing or problem solving sessions that include the whole group (don’t forget finance, HR, and legal) then you are not getting the “whole brain” of the organization that you have paid for.
- The growth zone work I do with teams pushes the participants to the edges of their business with specific exercises designed to take them into spaces where they know that they are not experts, but intuition tells them there is value. By putting people in a zone where they need to collaborate to build a thought platform, intuition comes forward and develops quickly into useable projects.
While this is a bit of a deep dive, keeping these five steps in mind is key to making your firm vibrant and customer focused. Nurturing these stages is at the heart of a vibrant culture that is constantly looking for better ways to serve one another, clients and customers. Watching for gaps in these stages, and bridging them, is key to helping your Growth Leaders thrive and bring forward their best.
My work takes me all over the world to apply the Right Project, Right Team, Right Plan Framework to help firms make strong plans for growth. If you’d like to discuss doing a one-day diagnostic session with me on your particular project or program, please reach out to me at 847-651-1014 or send me an email.
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