21-Tables of eight

How do innovation leaders use small peer-workgroups to specify and sequence 15- and 45-day projects of a master project roadmap?

QUIET REVOLUTIONS FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Innovation leaders understand the 90-90 Rule: after completing 90 percent of the work in making a change, sustainable success requires the completion of a second 90 percent of the work.

In general terms, the first 90 percent of the work entails specifying a future operational capability, securing sponsorship and funding, and managing the transition.

The second 90 percent of the work constitutes the harder part of innovation deployment: getting affected stakeholders to accept new accountabilities in the future operational capability.

Innovation leaders also understand that accountability constitutes an agreement by and between management and the individual about the following:

• Mission and values of the firm
• Strategic objectives and milestones indicating progress towards achieving the objectives
• Performance of specified and regular activities, tasks, and work initiatives
• Compliance with explicit quality standards of work deliverables
• Criteria of satisfaction (usually of co-workers, vendors, and customers)
• Exceptions reporting procedure and mechanism that entail a formal notification of noncompliance and a strong request to improve quality standards of work deliverables or criteria of satisfaction

Organizations vary extensively in how they manage accountability and, in particular, the agreement by and between management and the individual.

Innovation leaders use the opportunity afforded by a major change to institute more formal, explicit, and transparent accountability for all stakeholders contributing to customer engagement systems.

The figure below depicts one dimension of innovating new accountabilities: a do-it-yourself process in a controlled, facilitated environment.

ENABLING CAPABILITIES

A strategic innovation must become an operational capability before the deploying firm can realize the value proposition offered by vendors.

A full operational capability for customer engagement might a larger firm take many months or a few years to design, launch, and make fully operational.

Clearly, technology vendors must assist end-use firms in building an operational capability for customer engagement, or suffer long and unprofitable sales cycle and upgrade cycles.

Innovation leaders work backwards from a futureproof, deconstructing a future operational capability into a few enabling capabilities—tactical subsystems and workflows that serve as building blocks or shared services for a larger, more comprehensive capability of attracting, serving, and keeping profitable customers for life.

For example, the operational capability of multichannel analytics that track patterns of engagement of selected consumer cohorts can take 18 to 36 months to realize. However, the creation of a customer database master—might take 45 days or less, especially if the marketing organization engaged specialist firm to build this customer database master.

SMALL GROUPS SCOPE PROJECTS FAST

The figure above depicts a group of eight stakeholders in a project scoping session for one enabling capability.

In one or two hours, this executive peer-workgroup can easily define the five to eleven 15-day and 45-day projects that one enabling capability would entail.

A trained facilitator and subject matter expert familiar with the featured enabling capability can quickly lead the sequencing of these fast-cycle projects: do it now, do it next, do it later, or do it someday/maybe.

In two-day planning summits, four to seven workgroups  can scope 50 to 150 projects, using a simple project templates and discussion aids.

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