Excellence by Design

I recently took the time to catch up on the blog of Irving Wladawsky–Berger. IWB used to be a favorite of mine near the end of my IBM career because he seemed to well understand both technology itself, and the changing nature of the business (and social) environment that affects its use.  I pulled a couple interesting quotes from some of his recent postings:

• On the Services economy he writes on Feb 3, 2010 “key differences between research and innovation in the industrial and service economies… I simplified them down to three.  1) Focus: Physical Systems versus People-based, Organizational Systems 2) Design Objectives: Product Quality and Competitive Costs versus Positive Customer Experiences, 3) Organization and Culture:  Hierarchic and Siloed versus Multi-disciplinary and Collaborative”
• On Dec 23, 2009 on Collaborative Innovation he wrote: “IBM’s 2006 Global CEO Study was the link between external collaboration and innovation.  Over 75% of the 765 CEOs interviewed in the study ranked business partners and customer collaborations as top sources for new ideas.  This is very different from previous organizational models that assumed that innovation was too critical to involve outsiders.”
• On Jan 28, 2010 he writes about the challenges to successfully capitalizing on Disruptive Innovation: “Many companies fail to adequately embrace a disruptive innovation …because the strategy was essentially rejected by the organization…the institution was not able to stretch enough to be able to implement the needed changes.  This happens even when the very survival of the organization is at stake”.

Across these points is an underpinning truth related to Excellence by Design.  Excellence used to be achievable by a much more narrow focus.  A specific person or existing organization executes on a specific idea and product.  If THEY are capable and THE PRODUCT is great…excellence is achieved.  This is hard enough task and frankly one I think few organizations are strong in anyway.  Often there is more concern about the myriad of other issues at hand from budgets to performance reviews to project deadlines and of course politics, to distract people from the core task of building and delivering a great product.

But in today’s world this has become much more complex for several reasons:

• Achieving Excellence is a broader challenge.  It is not just related to the product, it is related to services as well.  It is also based on excellence in customer experience.  It must be global and also meet local  expectations.  Excellence simply covers a wider range of factors now than just the core product.  Great ‘design’ for excellence must include this.
• The participants who contribute to Excellence are much broader as well.  They include partners much more often, and many times customers as well.  Proctor and Gamble made a major and highly successful shift from  internally developed innovation, to an innovation strategy much more engaged with partners and customers.  Monsanto, which is a leader in agricultural biotechnology, has a very robust community they draw from to develop new product ideas as a core part of their pipeline’ process. Your design for excellence must include robust means for cross-functional, cross-company, cross-customer collaboration.
• Building a culture adept at effectively embracing disruptive innovation is hard…and often seen as threatening, especially in today’s economy.  People are seeking stability and consistency in their jobs at exactly the time that the world is pressuring companies to become better at capitalizing on emergent, disruptive innovation.  Its a big cultural (aka management) challenge to enable a culture that can thrive in chaos, yet stay under control to deliver with consistency.  Designing and establishing organizational values, policies, enablers, and reward systems that reflect this is a critical success factors, yet too many companies ignore this aspect in the Excellence by Design efforts.

My point is the Excellence by Design must include these considerations in order to be effective.  Your ‘design’ for excellence must include ‘Service Excellence’  (principle #8 of the Excellence by Design principles. It must include a comprehensive approach to partnering and effective leverage of your customers (principle #3: Craftsmanship and Community) and it must help build a culture that is  comfortable working in an environment that embraces chaos, yet has effective controls to drive successfully to conclusion. (principle #1: Chaos vs Control).

Taking this broad approach to Excellence by Design will help you achieve success in today’s disruptive world that is more services oriented, collaborative, and innovative.