Beyond Covid19 Part 3: Innovation

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Major events such as Covid19 sometimes result in new customer needs. However, even in the absence of these events, some organizations look for ways to move beyond customer expectations and requests to what would truly delight customers.  This effort to move up Kano’s Pyramid of customer needs is an ongoing pursuit, because what excited or delighted the customer yesterday will be more commonly requested today and then expected by tomorrow.

Creating a Breakthrough  These two motivations, responding to new, major event-driven needs or pursuing an internally driven strategy to differentiate through the next big breakthrough, share something in common: finding a way to do what has previously not been done.  That is the essence of Innovation.  While Innovation has gotten some additional attention in the wake of Covid19, it has been a popular strategy among many organizations for about 20 years.  As a result, it has been studied, written about, and leveraged to an increasing degree.

Navigating through Covid19, what has been learned about innovation is not only timely, but reaffirmed and fine-tuned.  If an analysis of your services or products portfolio (see last blog) resulted in identifying the need for one or more new offerings, be sure to leverage the lessons of innovation in expediting and also guaranteeing the success of what you need to create.

Innovating is not the same as Being Innovative  Two key points are worth mentioning here:

  1. Don’t confuse the need to innovate once or twice with becoming an Innovative organization. The former is not that difficult to do, while the latter is a much more difficult endeavor, one that will require more resources and has significant organizational, cultural, and financial ramifications for your organization or work group. If interested, I can help you understand and / or manage either.
  2. If you are part of a network, association, or multi-entity system or conglomerate, there is an underutilized improvement methodology that can make innovating a new product or service faster and easier. The process of Benchmarking leverages knowledge regarding the same or even similar products or services of others. Using this tool, you learn key constructs, design principles, enablers, barriers, and resource requirements to expedite the design of your own innovation.  Think Benchmarking might work for you?  I can help guide you through the process.

The Answer is Out There   If you need to innovate to create one or more new services or products, regardless of whether it is response to Covid19 or to further differentiate from the competition, Benchmarking may put you on the glide path to making it a reality.  Being part of a network or system gives you the added advantage of tapping other organizations with a common interest in your search for a usable model.  But even if you are not part of such a collective, Benchmarking can still be accomplished.  In fact, those who have used the method the longest find that they learn the most from organizations less similar to their own.  That may be counter-intuitive, but what are the odds you will learn something really new and different from organizations exactly like your own. And more importantly, being willing to learn from organizations of any type and size opens you up to a much larger universe of Benchmarking partners.  There is a saying I like to use in promoting the use of Benchmarking: “A better idea already exists...you just need to find it.”

Let me know if I can help you quickly find an organization that has already put in place what you are trying to create (or at least something very similar).

Jeff

Beyond Covid19 Part 2: Portfolio Audit

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Do you have the right services?

Coming out of a significant change event is a great time to reassess the various services you provide, especially if you find that your customer’s needs and interests have changed, as discussed in my previous blog.  Even if you are part of a team that provides services to internal customers within your own organization (sometimes referred to as back-office functions), the needs of those client-facing groups may have also changed as they try to adjust and adapt to the changing needs of those they serve, the external or “ultimate” customer.

Gain Perspective with The Portfolio View  A great tool used by for-profits for years is the portfolio analysis. However, non-profits and even departments within an organization serving internal customers can gain insights with slightly modified versions of a Portfolio Analysis.  Originating as the Portfolio Matrix in the 1970s and widely attributed to the Boston Consulting Group, the tool provides a structured method for organizations to comparatively assess the products or services in their portfolio.  It resembles a scatter plot where the x and y axis are used to help plot how each product or services is currently performing based on two variables.  Among for-profits, these two variables are usually projected market growth and market share, however not-for-profits might use increasing / decreasing need (perhaps drawing on a recent Community Needs Assessment), and availability / unavailability of other sources of the service.

The area of the Scatter plot is then divided into quadrants, with each product or service falling in one of these quadrants based on the scores.  Each quadrant has different strategic implications.  For example, if a service has increasing need in the community (plotting “high” on the vertical axis), and there are no alternatives (plotting far to the right on the horizontal axis), it is positioned in the upper right quadrant, where continued high investment will contribute significantly toward fulfilling the organization’s mission.   You can view a more detailed description and illustration on my web site.

The Importance of Balance  Major changes or events, such as the pandemic, often result in a temporary, and sometimes permanent, shift in customer needs and interests, which may provide a solid rationale for repositioning one or more services in a different quadrant.  You may even discover new customer needs that could be added in one of the quadrants representing emerging and / or growing service opportunities.  As you work with a Portfolio Analysis, you might be tempted into thinking that the end game is to be heavily concentrated in that high demand / sole provider quadrant.  Strategically, though, long-term sustainability of your organizations or groups is best achieved when there are services in all four quadrants.  It may help to think of product and services as having an innate life cycle, beginning with discovery, then growth, then maturity, and finally decline.  Having all of your services in the same life cycle stage (or Portfolio quadrant) at once, no matter what stage that is, can have very undesirable effects now or in the near future.

Do you need help is assessing your portfolio against changing customer needs?  Do you need ideas on how to “re-balance” your portfolio?  Contact me at your convenience.

Jeff