How can innovation be the key to a promising future for organizations

In this episode of “Better Innovation,” Global Tax Innovation Leader and host Jeff Saviano interviews Tendayi Viki, PhD, Partner at Strategyzer, and author of Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation. Jeff and Tendayi dive into the role of the “intrapreneur” within organizations.

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In this episode, Jeff is thrilled to speak with Tendayi Viki, PhD, Partner at Strategyzer, and author of Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation. Jeff and Tendayi dive into the role of the “intrapreneur” within organizations, and the ways in which their ideas and innovations can gain greater traction with key organizational decision-makers. Tendayi talks about how “raising the pirate flag” can lead to great things. But, for innovation to succeed, it often requires layers of buy-in from executives and heavy collaboration. Jeff and Tendayi discuss the importance of asking the right questions at the right time, and key ways innovation teams can benefit from some degree of separation from the core business, without becoming isolated. We hope you enjoy this in-depth discussion on the power of channelling innovation within organizations.

For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available.

Introduction

Jeff Saviano

Hey Better Innovation. It's Jeff. Today we have Tendayi Viki on the show. He is an innovation rock star. He holds his PhD in psychology. He's got his MBA. And he's an Associate Partner at a firm called Strategize, where he helps big organizations innovate for the future while managing their core business. Tendayi has been shortlisted for the prestigious Thinkers 50 Innovation Award.
As a matter of fact, he made their 2018 radar list for emerging management thinkers to watch. He's written three books based on his research. One of them, his most recent Pirates in the Navy. He also wrote The Corporate Startup and the Lean Product Lifecycle. The Corporate Startup was awarded the 2018 CMI Management Book of the year. He's also a regular contributor and writer for Forbes.
So, if you have a growth agenda or if you have innovation responsibilities, you're going to love this episode. Tendayi he has his thumb on the pulse of innovation in complex organizations. You should also know that he's an influencer and collaborator with friends of Better Innovation. You remember for the fans of our show, you know Steve Blank and Alex Osterwalder. They’ve each been on the show a few times. If you liked Alex, if you enjoy Steve and those episodes, you will really love listening to Tendayi. This was such an easy conversation. I learned so much from him. Here you go. Tendayi Viki.
Tendayi, welcome to the show! Let's get right to it. What do you mean by being a pirate in the Navy?

Tendayi Viki

Yeah, so that's like a riff off of what Steve Jobs said, right? He said when he was talking about, you know, his team that was creating the Macintosh, he was talking about how it's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy and yet, like, you know, over the years, even before the pandemic, right.
We suddenly realized that in large organizations have to innovate just as much as startups do. Because Steve Jobs was making this distinction between, you know, large organizations that are slow. They move in and start ups and how fast moving they are. But we know a lot of innovations also need to innovate now. So, you know, maybe it's now better to be a pirate in the navy.

Saviano

I've been looking forward to having you come on the show today. So thank you so much for joining us in our virtual. Better Innovation studio. And you also use that same phrase for the name of your book, Pirates of the Navy - How Innovators Lead Transformation. Tell us a bit about the focus of the book.

Viki

It's a really interesting book, right?
Because if we're saying that large companies need to innovate and then we're seeing that supernovas need to sort of drive that transformation. Then the fundamental question becomes, well, what sort of people, what sort of behaviors and sort of practices see those interpretations engage in? And in most of these conversations around corporate innovation, right. You know, like how in a story you need some sort of antagonist and how the entrepreneur is always the hero pretty much in their own story.
But actually, this book tries to turn the lens a little bit on the entrepreneur to try to sort of challenge them and have them have a deeper, more meaningful conversation about how authentic they are in their approach to innovation. Right. And so that's really what the book is about, is about pushing this sort of authentic practice in within ‘intrepreneur’.

Saviano

And there's certainly more of these ‘intrepreneur’. I love that term. It may not come to mind for our audience but it's a riff on an entrepreneur. So instead of the E and entrepreneur is I, an intrepreneur, somebody who's innovating within a large organization and just how difficult that is. And as we look over the past decade or so that we're seeing more entrepreneurialism, I think, and this is something we explored on the podcast and I in the past that there really haven't been that many innovation leaders within big companies.

If you go back eight to ten years ago, it certainly wasn't as prevalent as it is today. Do you think that that's right?

Viki

Yeah. No, I mean, I remember when I first started this sort of career, I used to have to fight to convince leaders that innovation was important. So that was like a really difficult conversation to have.

But what has happened over time is his businesses have matured and his markets have matured. There's a certain recognition among leaders now that I see the one reliable way to drive growth might be innovation. And so, they're starting to take an interest in innovation and appointing heads of innovation, they're engaging in all types of innovation activity. And so, the challenge now that they sort of come to us with is how do we do this well? Which is a really interesting question. Now, because it's a bit of a different conversation

Saviano

Recognizing that there are skills and capabilities and a discipline around innovation and best practices and understanding and corralling that for an organization. It's obviously it's part of what many people, maybe everybody in an organization, part of what they should be doing.

But what we're talking about Tendayi is the recognition that sometimes you need to carve it out in a special place, give it a special spot in an organization, call those individuals ‘intrepreneurs’, those entrepreneurs who are focusing on driving growth and driving new solutions and products and frankly, new business models as well. So, I really like The Pirate and the Navy and just love that you use that.
And such a great quote from a great entrepreneur, Steve Jobs and the term ‘pirate’ connotes thinking perhaps like an outsider and sometimes maybe that they're in it for themselves or that they're a bit of a swashbuckler. And is there perhaps a risk of creating some sort of an antagonistic point of view with company and management by adopting a pirate mentality?

Viki

There's a downside, perhaps, of being viewed as a pirate who isn't there. Yeah. No, I mean I mean, that's the downside is that you're going to be made to walk the plank, right? So you know, it's one of Alex Osterwalder's pet peeves, which is “don't call yourself a pirate”.

He's always saying that, right? And it's like, cause pirates used to get killed. And so the pirates in the Navy is an interesting, almost like oxymoronic paradox, right? Because like where have you ever seen a pirate joining the Navy? And the reason why the play on words really works is it's true. You don't want to be a pirate.
And in the book, I make this distinction between two types of pirates, which is the typical pirate who's just a criminal roaming the high seas and looting and robbing. And if they ever get discovered, then, you know, they're going to be punished quite severely. And I attach that to the ‘intrapreneur’ or the innovator who tries as much as possible to be as far away from the core business as they can fit up the innovation level in a different city.
If you want to like be so far away that you're operating almost like untethered from the mothership. And, you know, that's sort of impractical. The opposite of that is a different kind of pirate that's called a privateer and so privateers were pirates, but they were attached to a specific institution, for example. Sir Francis Drake, who was known as Queen Elizabeth's pirate and his role was to go around and roam the high seas just like pirates do.
But he hit a targeted strategic mission, which is to target enemy ships. If you flip that metaphor again and look at the corporate innovator that's the innovator who's really great at ensuring he understands what the company needs strategically, really great building bridges with leadership, with a greater prepare in the organization to receive the innovations that they're working on so that when they're ready, those things can be scaled.
And so that's really how a pirate in the Navy, if you want to call that operates and they operate as a privateer. The only problem is that like, ‘be a privateer’ is not a really good book title. So I had to call them pirates in the Navy, right. To sort of make that paradox much more sort of dark.

Saviano

I think among the best advice that we got in, in setting up our innovation teams and innovation labs is that you should strive to be separate but not isolated. And I always took that to heart. I've always thought that it's a great way to describe. I'd be anxious to get your thoughts on that same day that the separateness perhaps is what corporate innovators and entrepreneurs need in order to make the progress and to come out of the day-to-day performance obligations of the organization and focus on what's coming next. But we've seen many examples of corporate innovation teams that just get isolated, and it makes the re-entry difficult as you describe it, you've got to be somehow tethered to the mothership because there has to be a reentry at some point for many of the solutions that are worked on by the innovation teams.

Do I have that right? Would you agree with that?

Viki

Yeah, no, you absolutely have it right. So the one thing that we've understood, all of us, right, Steve Blanc, Alex Osterwalder, Eric Reese, all of us have understood that you cannot manage innovation or startups in the same way that you manage traditional businesses. You know, the processes, the metrics, the management style of how you run traditional businesses gets in the way of what you need to accomplish your driving innovation. If you're running a core business, the five year projection makes sense, the roadmap makes sense. But if you're doing innovation, that doesn't make any sense at all, like you don't know who the customer is, what their needs are going to be. So you're pretty much exploring.

Okay, so as you're managing those innovations, you have to do that in a place that's going to separate from how you run the core business. It has to be sometimes physically separate. It may have to be different teams, but it certainly has to be different management style look, a different style of portfolio management different metrics and different styles of working.
Then the question becomes, Okay, we accept that as true. So now how far do you go? Do you go as far as San Francisco versus New York? Like you the innovation teams in San Franciscoand in the core businesses in New York, like do you do that separation rate, that big a separation, or is the separation much more strategic, which is there's a conversation between the leadership in the core business and the innovation teams about which strategic areas we want you to explore. And then there's a legitimate space that is funded by the core business, is supported by the core business that is set up for innovation teams to sort of work through like a sandbox, if you want to call it that. And then there's a constant conversation about the work that's being done in the sandbox and how the mothership can prepare to scale that. Right. And so I remember talking to a really great team that I was working at an investment bank, a very large investment bank. And they were saying that when they set up the innovation lab, they used to call themselves the home for homeless ideas. So they used to say, like, if your idea is homeless, bring it to us, we'll help you work on it.
And then they told me that, like, the reason we have you here today is that, like, we realized that if an idea of the homeless when it comes to us is usually homeless when it leaves, because there's nobody really in the organization to receive it or take it to scale. So that bridge always has to be built the key, key part of the innovator's job.

Saviano

But very difficult, too and we find in our practice and with the clients that we serve that there are many opportunities and it gets very enticing to create those bridges between innovation teams and labs. And you want to take the different thinking. Oftentimes, we're hiring different people. You have different skills and capabilities on innovation teams, and you want to sprinkle that.

You want to find ways to take that knowledge and the different way of approaching a problem, which is really a lot of what the best innovation teams in companies are doing is they're approaching problem solving perhaps a bit differently. You want to take that like fairy dust and sprinkle it on the organization. And so, we've explored different ways by rotating individuals to and from these teams and creating those links. But I always go back to the separate but not isolated and respecting the separateness, but not getting too far away because someday those ideas will have to come back. Well, what I also really like about the pirate in the Navy metaphor and to think more about the Navy and I'll be excited to talk to my dad who’s an old Navy guy.
Talk to my dad about this, that there is to me, the Navy part of that connotes steady and progress and methodical forward momentum. And I was also thinking about that in preparing for today Tendayi that in some ways the goal of a large organization is to create this constant momentum, forward progress. In some ways, this methodical focus on momentum can be beneficial to a company, not quite the swashbuckling of a pirate, but as somebody who's innovating within a large organization. I appreciate the at times the methodical progress on key items, too. Would you agree with that?

Viki

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the largest mistakes that we made as we got excited about this movement around innovation is we started going around growing large companies should act like startups, large companies should act like startups. And it's just like it's hard to do that well.

It's also like the worst idea in the world, because actually when you're a large company, if you've discovered something that works, the whole concept of Lean Startup is that you should not be doing things that are not necessary for the stage that you are, waste in Lean Startup is doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. So, before you understand the customer don't build the product, before you understand how to price the product in scale, it don't launch.
Right. You figure out all these things as you go. And then once you've figured all those things out, why am I instructing you to go back and test? Like it doesn't make any sense. So we don't want to create the chaos. We want the slow, systematic, methodical way of making forward progress In fact, one of the things that we often work on with clients, and I'm often involved with clients, is something we call a disruption risk assessment, which is just assessing the core business as it is and the environment in which in which its operating and seeing where the disruption risks are and how we can tweak and sort of, you know, just sort of you know, shift a little bit the, you know, the Navy and sort of pointed in the direction that you can sustain itself over time. I think that one of the bigger challenges we have, and this is where innovation sometimes plays a role, is that the concept that you have a forward momentum. It's interesting because sometimes leaders and boards of directors tend to view the business as static and they tend to view that.
They tend to view the job is to maintain the thing the way they found it. Right. Which is, you know, where, you know, that's sort of the sprinkling of innovation. You just can really help to say, listen, not only do you need to maintain what you're doing, but one of the best ways to maintain what you're doing is to keep it moving slowly, methodically, forward, doing efficiency innovations, improving the core business, paying attention to emerging threats and systematically responding.
You don't have to overreact, the only time you have to overreact. If you wait until it's too late, but if you start early, you can really move slowly towards discovering the things you need to discover. Right.

Saviano

And perhaps find the key attributes of a startup that I love and we've had. Alex Osterwalder has been on the podcast a few times now, as has Steve Blanke. So, they're regulars there in the Better Innovation family, and we've loved their insights that they've provided to our audience over the years and the way that we've approached it. I'd be so curious to get your point of view is that when we look to startups and just this past year in the early stages of the pandemic, we supported a startup that emerged out of MIT called Path Check, and they were developing contact tracing technology that was critically important.

Just remember back in the early days when we had many, many companies and non-profits were starting to experiment with contact tracing technology, and we had literally the best scientists at MIT and there was a community that came together. It was a startup. It didn't exist. I think I got the call on March 9th. It's just been over a year ago, and they were like eight days into their existence.
And very quickly they got to about 200 people and the speed at which they were working, the speed that we've seen other startups, the ability to move on a dime to fail fast. I'll never forget that on an early morning call with the Path Check team, they would be recognizing the need for a document to provide potential customer. And literally, like by the end of the day, there was a complete well thought through with maybe 30 people contributing to it.
So there's definitely some attributes to take away. And I'll just be so curious to get your thoughts on. Do you think that that's the right view is to look at, what are some of the things that startups do well, and how do I replicate that within a large organization? That's just an example that we've found in some of our work.

Viki

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, that's the question right? Which is what other things that startups do well and the things that start-ups do well, like you say, the ability to respond quickly to sort of to fail and just accept, okay, that didn't work. Let's do something else, right And so, so those are things that you have to be willing to accept or at least lessons you you're willing to learn as an organization.

The fundamental management question right is, okay, that's a great method. The fundamental question we have is when do we use the method? If we took the startup methodology and put it in our toolbox, and took the traditional method methodology, then put them in our toolbox and each one of them, and there's a time and place to use those, when do we use them?
And what we find with companies, what they struggle with is they pick up the wrong tool at the wrong moment. Like, you know, a startup team is pitching them an idea. And you know what they pick up? They pick up the traditional finance tool and start asking you what's the roadmap? What's the five year plan? Right. Or they have a conversation with someone or a CEO goes to Silicon Valley and they come back all charged up because they start startup and they go, we need to do more X, Agile or whatever. Right and then they take that and they inject chaos in a place where it's not necessary. We need frameworks for deciding whether this is a situation where we're dealing with uncertainty. This is a situation with predictability, the situation that's evolving from predictability towards uncertainty. You might need to stabilize things a little bit by learning some more, and then we start picking up the right tool to apply here.
And that's why I think the management challenge for the future that we're facing now is this ability for our leadership from boards to CEOs to C-level execs, to understand when to do what, right. I almost started writing a book called Right Question Right Time. I stopped writing it, but that's really the principle that that does with the on deck is when do we ask the right questions at the right time and make sure we're using the right tool?

Saviano

It's a great way to put it. If Steve Blank were a part of this conversation today, I'll bet he would say the most important thing you can do, perhaps in many of those instances is to get out of the building. And traditional management theory keeps large organizations very internally focused looking within themselves and their own financial metrics and staying inside the building.

And so I think it's a great lesson that you speak of Tendayi and so critical as we think about what organizations have been through this past year. Let's shift the conversation a bit. I'm so interested to know about your experience in the last 12 months. We are just at the 12 month point. I remember for me we started, lockdown was on, my son's birthday March 12th, so we just celebrated his next birthday.
It's been a full year and I think many in our audience were that same week or so, second or third week in March. During this past year, as you've worked with organizations, what are some of the differences that you've noticed in how they're innovating and maybe some of the best practices that are emerging from what they've done during the pandemic that's gone? Well, why don't we start there?

Viki

Yeah, so this one is an interesting one because, I've been struggling with this question for a few months now. But like, how do you how do you sense, I think what happened? Because one of the things to note that is that organizations can act quicker than they thought. Right?

So, you know, if you if you had wanted to work remotely in 2018, you would have been asked to fill in the form and get approval from legal and security and compliance.

Saviano

The six-year plan to move 10% of the business.

Viki

Exactly right. Yeah. And but, but we certainly realized that all of those things, people can actually figure out ways to do it.
So there was a real like clear ability of organizations to respond to crises if they need to. And at the same time, there was also like a struggle to respond to crises if you need to. And so that kind of dancing through that paradox and trying to figure out which organizations struggled the most and which organizations didn't struggle so much and what was the tension and how did they solve it?
It's really been a struggle for me in terms of sense making, right? Trying to sort of look at that space as I've been working with these companies.

Saviano

And how they make decisions. Right. Isn't the heart of it around decision making and the information that they intake and how do they absorb information, who gets to receive it and who's actually making those decisions to move fast and to and to be able to, as you said, that that oftentimes and as we work with companies, the digital trends formation plan that was a two to four year plan happened in like two to four months that they just didn't have a choice.

So, we're seeing some real lessons from organizations on how fast they can move anything in particular Tendayi around business models that you're seeing companies experimenting or having success with new business models during the past year.

Viki

Yeah, so that was the way actually, I actually think that. So one of the observations that I can make almost in a way was if it involved internal processes like the way people work and collaborate, I find that companies found that is almost easier to do because it was almost like you need to survive.

So we need to set this up quickly so we can actually get back to work. So therefore we're moving fast to actually do that. When it came to shifting the business model, right, there have been two types of companies. There's been a company that says, No, we need to weather the pandemic, so no more innovation can we just please focus on making sure we survive? And then there are those companies that go, actually, this is telling us that we need to double down on the things that we were already doing. And so, what I've noticed is that organizations that already had an innovation muscle were much more likely to respond. It's almost like, you know, once you have the heart attack, it's too late to start jogging, right? It's like by that time. And so and so that's a dilemma I'm facing. And just a quick example for you. So, you know, the kind of businesses that have really struggled from a business model perspective are organizations that need people to gather for them to make money. So you can imagine like a theater or a museum. And I kid you not, I was working with a national museum three years ago who would try to figure out a business model because their funding was getting cut by the government.
And one of the things they were considering was sort of broadcasting their exhibitions out to the world so people don't have to come to the museum.

Saviano

A virtual experience.

Viki

Virtual experience create it. Right.

Saviano

Interesting.

Viki

And they would do it live so, you know, it would be interactive, etc., etc..

Saviano

Ahead of their time.

Viki

Ahead of that time. And the first thing they did was they beamed up their exhibitions to a movie audience so people would go to a movie to watch the movie theater to watch the exhibition. But actually, one of those is like, stay at home and go to Iplay or whatever and just and just watch and pay a subscription. I think by the time I left; they'd stop doing that. Oh, so interesting because it's like, yeah, yeah. Like, who needs to do that? Right? Like, whatever, right? And so it's almost like if they just kept working on that and refining it and making it better and refining and then becoming known as the business that does that.
When the pandemic hit, they would have been ready.

Saviano

But at least they started it. But that's a I guess I guess I could look at that both ways, that maybe they shouldn't have stopped it, but they did start it and they probably created assets, and if they wanted to revive it, it would be certainly much easier to pick back up where they left off.
Then it would be to start over. And I maybe it's the optimist in me, but I would look at the positives from that that at least they tried and I think like many great innovation teams, there's a stable of experiments that exist in the closet, in the laboratory. And every so often we go into that closet and we look on the bottom shelf and we find something and we take something from the top shelf and we connect it with something on the middle shelf.
And that's so much about innovation, but that's such a cool story. Did you find some, so maybe finish the thought. Did they revive did they did they pick back up some of those thoughts and create a virtual experience?

Viki

I haven't heard that they have. I've been kind of paying attention and I haven't really heard that they have.

And it's probably because they're trying to manage the crisis. Right. So in one sense, it is the thing that happens inside large organizations where innovators are working on something that could potentially help in the future. But nobody can ever imagine a future where that would be necessary. So the thing is, if shelved, then the innovation muscle is forgotten. And I'm sure there's several other, actually several other events that have happened virtually. Right, several museums and art galleries that have hosted loads of virtual events. And so it's really interesting to just, I guess, the message from me, the key takeaway is just keep doing these things. Even if it's during the time you're doing it, it looks like it makes no sense. Eventually, it'll become useful, not just the ideas themselves, but the ways of working that allow you to generate those ideas. You will need that practice whenever, whenever a crisis arrives.

Saviano

That is such good advice. And, I also wonder if you have experience that over the past year there has been more intensity on the results from innovation programs.
And we'll talk a little bit later about innovation theater. But but I felt like that perhaps there's less room for experimentation for experimentation sake. There's less of that. Maybe you could look at it as an academic experience, but that everybody is being measured. The results matter in years like the one that we just went through. Did I get that right. Would you agree with that?

Viki

Yeah. So in Pirates in the Navy, right. I actually blame entrepreneurialism and innovative for that problem, which is for years and years and years, we say to CEO, it's a black box, just give us the money and leave us alone.

Saviano

And it doesn't work. So well.

Viki

Exactly. For after a while. But like, okay, what happened to my 3 million and what did you produce? Well, you know, we learned a lot. So after a while we were like, no, we actually need an hour away from our innovation. And so the one of the bigger challenges we have is that innovators don't like to be measured. So, then the question becomes, what are we measuring? Right? Because if you don't have a portfolio of ideas, we know that the best way to find really great ideas is to have loads of ideas. You make multiple small bets, and then you track the progress of those ideas and double down investment on those ideas that are showing traction and divest from those investments that are not showing traction. And then you sort of implement that and scale that. So, once we accept that principle of best practice, it then means that we need transparency for leaders to know which things have attracted things don't have traction so they can make investment decisions.

And so then you need to measure, right? And the thing that you're measuring when it comes to innovation is how close are these teams to finding a business model that works? How close are these teams to finding value propositions that resonate with customers? How close are these teams to create a process that's going to save us $3 million a year in our manufacturing system? So those are the things that we want to measure. How close are they to finding (dot dot dot) and what are the metrics they're going to show us directionally that they're on track? The problem with most companies is they only measure the ultimate metric, which is how much revenue if you generated how much, how much profits have you generated, how quickly are you growing, where innovation does a journey towards that?
And as leaders, we need to be making investment decision the different milestones along that journey. And so the metrics that we really need to be tracking are metrics that tell us whether a team is on track towards success or whether they're off track. And we can stop we can stop the, you know, the team that are off track.

Saviano

Right. I think that's so well said. I think that's so important that we have many entrepreneurs and innovators in our listening audience. Everybody's focused on growth. And it's so important to understand what are the KPIs that really matter. We're seeing just this past year. One of the impacts that I've seen across some of the innovation stuff that we're working on, our new velocity measures, new ways to measure the velocity of a solution.

How fast is it? Is it moving through the system and where are thing is getting gummed up and finding new ways to measure the velocity and discover where perhaps there's a barrier? And then how do you step in and how do you remove it? I'm just so interested to talk about a piece that you wrote about the experience that you just went through of in the context of the black box that you've got management or leadership within a company evaluating an innovation team.
You wrote a great piece for Forbes on Progressing Innovation Ideas and Big Companies, and you described an experience, as I was reading it, I was sort of shaking my head saying yes as I was reading. And we've seen this. I've been referring to this article with my Innovation Posse as the ‘have you considered piece’. Explain for our audience what I mean by that.

Viki

Okay. So that's the worst question the leaders asked. Yeah. So, the throwaway question, you know, when leaders are like listening to an innovation team, pitching the progress they've made, and then they just ask a throwaway question, like, have you considered dot, dot, dot? And then the team is kind of frazzled because what happens with teams is that when the leaders say something, it might be a throwaway statement to you, but to the team it sounds like directional instruction.

Saviano

Everybody's hanging on their words, right?

They're hanging on every piece of feedback. They've been preparing for weeks for that presentation. And so everything matters, right?

Viki

Yeah. And they've been rehearsing and practicing and they've sent you the pre read, so they assume that you read it. So they're assuming that, you know, your question is a deliberately thought out phrase. Based on reading the pre read. But what we know about leaders is they don't read the pre read that the teams have sent them. They don't really listen during the presentation. They're probably checking emails or whatever. And then because they're leaders, they feel the need to say something, otherwise they're not leading. And so, this team that was there, they gave the presentation, then the leaders say to them, Have you ever considered what you're doing with mobile?

Right. So the team is like, all right, we haven't really thought about that. Well, we'll definitely bring something to you back the next time we we're going to go right now. So they went and spent weeks thinking about how they're going to iterate and move towards mobile. And then they come back and they present the same presentation to the leader and then it is like, why are you talking about mobile like that?
That they've forgotten their own throwaway statement and how much impact that it had on the team in the frustration was palpable. Like the team was close to tears because they just wasted like a month, you know, preparing to do another presentation so that they can get an investment decision from these leaders and the leaders are asking the wrong questions. They're not really paying attention to what progress teams are making towards finding things that work.

Saviano

I think is great advice for leaders in that situation and what not to do right. Don't ask that and maybe you should read the premise. I also think that there's a lesson I was thinking about after reading the piece that there's a lesson for innovation teams to. Right. How do they deal with it? So perhaps if they really believe that the question was just off rather than wasting a few weeks, maybe there's a lesson learned for the innovation team as well to politely and respectfully challenge that and say that there's many other features and functionalities of this particular product that could be beneficial. But can we focus on the core?

Can we please let's get some feedback on this core product. And I've so wanted to ask you that question that the great example that you gave in the piece, what advice would you have given to the innovation team when they were in the moment when that leader was making that? Have you considered comment? Because I think I'll bet everybody or many people in our audience are smiling right now thinking about like they all got the question. I've had that question probably over a dozen times what do you think we should do when we get that question?

Viki

Yeah, I think that one of the things we should try and do is so there's a couple of pushback that you can have. No one is, you know, to what extent. So, we hear you really, really great feedback.

Thank you very much. To what extent do you think that will help us accomplish the goal of dot, dot, dot, dot which is what your presentation would have been about? Right. We've already found what customers need. We already know what their jobs to be done. We've already found the right channels to reach them and earn from them.
We've shown you the evidence. How do you think that the suggestion you've made is going to augment that? Right. So you start forcing the conversation towards what we really want to talk about, which is evidence of progress. So that's one part, that's something that the team can do. But what I found is also really powerful and this is something that I've been doing a lot is we want to make cultural agreements between decision makers and innovation teams.
So, now I spend a lot of my time working with leaders and coaching them on how to ask the right questions at the right time. But not only do I make that explicit, I coach them in front of the innovation team. Oh, interesting. Yeah, right. And so before but before the teams present, I get up and go, we've, we've all agreed to read the pre reads.
This team is in the exploration stage of the innovation project. Inappropriate questions would be things around this. And so, let's go with the presentation and then we've already created a culture, right? And so that's another way that I'm also coaching the team which is lead with where you are on the innovation journey and lead with what outstanding questions still need to be tackled and how you're going to move forward the right so that you can frame the conversation around the appropriate things to talk about when you when you when you're dealing with innovation.

Saviano

There's also a good lesson about being prepared for those events and that there is a few moments in the journey of a particular product that are really important when you're arranging funding and reporting back to stakeholders and getting projects to continue. And I, I also took that from the piece. Let me just mention one more that there was another piece you wrote really like it Eight Ways Innovators Can Test Ideas Without Hurting Their Company's Brand.

And it got me thinking actually after I read it, I started to scan through all the interviews we’ve on Better Innovation. I think for a number of 66 or 67 or so, I start to lose track and to, to see have we explored this and I don't think we have I think it's such an interesting idea about testing ideas and the impact on brands and how often overlooked that is.
And that what was so interesting to me was that I do think it's an area that's overlooked by innovation teams. Let me just start with that question. Do you agree that the connection of testing ideas and innovation and impact on brand, do you think that is overlooked? So, it's overlooked in the sense that innovation teams, innovation, there's always think that legal and compliance are overreacting.
Like nobody wants to take the perspective of the other side. We always think that legal and compliance and branding and marketing, they're all overreacting. This is just let us ‘come on, man, let us do the MVP. If you're not read the lean startup, right? Just let us do the MVP piece.’

Saviano

Yeah, there's not a lot of empathy. Let's just say before that.

Viki

Not a lot of empathy. And the moment you say that, right, the guy in legal and compliance especially, you can think about this in like a large pharmaceutical organization where the are like strict rules about when you engage with patients or when you engage with doctors, right? Like this rules of engagement, they're like, you know, can you talk about your products, especially in Europe,

Can you talk about your products with doctors? Can you talk about your products with patients? So, it is fundamental to really think about whether or not the experiments that we're doing are useful. But I'll tell you another quick story. Not only do you need alignment, right, but you need alignment for this one other reason for working in a large publishing company.
And one of the teams that I was coaching decided that they were going to run an experiment, and the experiment was going to be a landing page with a new product offering. And then we would see who would sign up. And the call to action on the landing page was click here to register your interest. So, we thought the customers would click, register their interest and they would call them to find out why they.
And of course, customers don't do that. This guy thinks this is really interesting. Picks up the phone and calls the sales guy, the guy that he's always been dealing with, ‘Hey, we're here. You're launching X, Y, Z X-Y-Z’.

Saviano

With no idea, probably. Right.

Viki

Right, right. And then the sales guy is like I don't know. Can you just share with me the link?
What are you talking about? Shares the link. Then it comes all the way down through the organization. Now the C-level is involved and they're like this whole wheat land on this, like, young innovation guy, right? And it's like, what are you doing? So it's also a way of aligning the organization to respond, if people know you're running these sorts of experiments, right? It's a way to align of allowing the organization to respond. So, you have to care not just about your innovation project succeeding, but also about the overall organization and the impact that that's going to have.

Saviano

It's a really good story. I love it. And I think the message of alignment and frankly, transparency within an organization. We talked earlier about the importance of the interconnectedness of innovation teams and separate but not isolated it.

But that's a great example of you really should let the mothership know what you're doing, right? The customer relationship is important. I just thought that you're eight practical ways that innovators can test ideas and important notions around getting an informed consent. Right? That's a big deal. You know, don't hoodwink your customer. It may sound so obvious as we talk about it, but make sure the customer really knows.
Are they consenting? Do they know that this is an experience? Do they know that the product is still within a beta and perhaps it's not in full production? There's a couple, we would just love your thought on that. I don't think this is one that perhaps many would think of about white labeling the solution. I thought that was really good advice.
I talk a bit about that as a way to manage this risk.

Viki

Yeah. So what? So there's a couple of things you gain from white labeling the solution, right? Number one, this is when you're white label the solution is when you are testing the solution. But people don't know that it's from your company. They just think it's a new product that's actually logic.

So, there's two benefits to that, right? The first benefit is that you protect the company brand. The second benefit is that you find out if people are genuinely interested in the solution because there's a brand boost that you get to say, Oh, look, company X is about to launch this, and then people start paying attention. So, you really get to learn really well whether or not customers are interested in the solution.
And you do it in a clean way without all the confounding variables around, you know, the power of your own brand. Right? And then you can be positive or negative. Yeah, exactly.

Saviano

It could be a positive or negative influence on the new product. Just the company perhaps was just going through recent public difficult times of sorts, or it could be the opposite that you want to test the idea without the brand positive lists.

Viki

Exactly.

Saviano

I thought that was really good advice. The other one, I'll just mention one more because I think it's such a cool idea that I don't think many do this is creating an innovation brand. So actually and there are some great examples, if you can, if you search for your favorite tech company, they may have X after their name as part of their innovation team or they may call themselves the lab or some other cool, you know, innovation garage or what have you.

But there's a brand to it. It's not just internal. What I love about it is that when the company is very publicly using that brand, then the consumers will understand that it's part of an innovation experiment. I thought that that was important. Is that fairly prevalent? Is that something that you would recommend to many companies?

Viki

Yeah, I mean, I would recommend that to many, many companies because all you do is you put your brand there and a lab on the corner or your brand there and an ex on the corner or your brand there at a foundry on the corner or whatever.

Right. Because, well, because what it does is yeah, the thing about testing things and customers knowing the things in beta is that when they engage with it, they don't expect it to have the same exact quality and predictability and reliability as something that's being launched by the main core business. Right. They understand that this is an experimental brand that is testing ideas and it's really cool that they allow us to use their product before they're ready.
You can make that an experience. Right? And not only that, only the customers enjoy that experience of being involved into co-designing your products with you, but it also then starts to create a sort of halo effect on your mother brand about, you know, in terms of how positive that innovation kind of label can be in your mother brand.
So, all we're saying is as you run experiments, just think about how you can either positively benefit the brand by creating a lab or the innovation brand or white label the experiment so that nobody knows that the brand is doing it or get informed consent. Or even if you don't want people to know they're being tested, get consent, that they're going to get tested, but they won't know like they already like give you like early consent. And those are all things that you can do to start protecting the organization.

Saviano

It's about protection. But I also want to make sure that our audience takes away you says something really important about the halo effect. And I love that because and I would really implore our listening audience that are innovators within often cases that could be private sector, could be government, could be non-profits, as they're innovating within those organizations, that oftentimes it's an internal thing and it's a group that's may be branded internally, but it's not known outside the walls of the organization.

What a cool opportunity. And I'd really implore the audience to take Tendayi’s thoughts to heart, sometimes putting a box around it, creating a brand associated with it, and telling the world that you're doing it not only protects yourself to ensure that they understand when you're experimenting, which was the focus of your piece, but the halo effect, I think is so important to companies that we could all recognize that have done that very outwardly, I think have reaped the benefits of the general public feeling like this is an innovative company and who doesn't want to work with an innovative company.

Viki

Exactly. Exactly. I think you're absolutely right about the halo effect, and this particular halo around innovation is a really important halo for organizations these days. Young folks really want to work for innovative companies. They don't want to work for it. I mean, you've got a choice, but you can work with this really cool company with an innovation lab, or you can work for this retail company that's still working on the traditional product from 50 years ago, if the truth could become obvious sometimes. Yeah.

Saviano

yeah, yeah. Great advice. I want to go back to those we are getting towards the close of our time together today, and I want to go back to something we touched on earlier about innovation theater and sometimes and for our audience that it could be defined as the process of focusing on ideation. Typically, when we think about innovation theater, we think about fun, innovation, events, sometimes they involve pizza, sometimes they involve a little bit of beer. Instead of this like intense focus on innovation for the value of an organization and so how do you think companies can avoid the pitfalls of not falling within this innovation theater?

Viki

So it's interesting, right? Because the question that I often get because I write and talk a lot about the innovation theory is, should we then stop doing hackathons, right?

Should we then stop doing ideas, competitions? Should we stop using sticky notes?

Saviano

Are they all bad?

Viki

You're missing the point, right? What we're talking about here is an excessive focus on ideation and everything that comes around with an excessive focus on ideation. Even those events that have Peter Beard, those are cool events for, you know, creating an enthusiasm around culture and bringing people and getting them involved in something interesting.

It only becomes innovation theater if you stop there, right? Because there's an important distinction to make between creativity and the generation of ideas versus innovation itself. What transforms something from being creative or really great to the technology or a great idea to making something that an innovation is this transition of starting to think about how you create value, how you have impact.
Can you develop a value proposition to resonate with customers? Can you create a great business model that scale? It is the distinction between the crazy inventor that invents stuff, gets all the patients, and then nobody wants what they're inventing. And so the challenge for innovators is, Do you want to be the crazy inventor or do you want to be the innovator? I often say to innovators, you know, I don't know that you've heard that saying before. This is like, you know, if a tree falls in the forest, and it and it makes the sound, but no one is there to hear it, does it really make it sound like, well, you can take that and say, like, if you're an innovator and you're working loads of ideas, but customers never get to use them or you never get to scale them in market, are you really an innovator? And just by making that distinction, we start to push people to utilize the things that are really great for generating enthusiasm as momentum towards then finding something of value. Right.
And that's really what we're trying to push people to do here.

Saviano

So what to avoid, just to really get and get to the point because it's such an important point to make and we haven't spent a ton of time actually in our first season, we've had some, came on the podcast talked a bit about innovation culture and we spent a little bit of time on this.
But I think the essence of the lesson here today that I take from your comments is that the innovation events can't be above the innovation events themselves. Like that can't be where it ends. And I find that when innovation teams have sub teams that are only focused on that, that's where perhaps you can run into trouble. If you have a team that's their only job is to run a hackathon and they're measured on just the hackathon itself, then if you don't have anybody to pick up those ideas coming out of it, then it's like vapor in the wind. Who cares? Who cares what came out of it, right? So, I think it's such a valuable lesson that especially in the year, like the one that we just went through and still as we emerge from this pandemic, the results matter. And so don't stop at the cool hackathon, but make sure that you've got a process to then, how will you evaluate ideas coming out of the hackathon and who's going to pick up the right ones and get them funded and move them forward in an organization?

Viki

Exactly. And you know what? Here's what's even more interesting is sometimes people think they're doing something great until they realize they're engaged in innovation theater. So I've even worked with organizations that literally set up accelerator programs, you know, three months programs where people submit their ideas and they can work on those ideas under the supervision of innovation. Coaches it's great.

It's fun. It's longer than a night with beer and pizza. So, they feel that they're doing a really great job because they're working on an idea. And I've worked with one large organization that had done they showed me the stat. We did 150 ideas in 30 countries in 18 months, and I'm like, ‘Oh, that's fantastic. That's, that's actually really great.’
So, what happens after the accelerator? And then all the teams go back to their countries and they go back to their businesses. Okay, how many of those teams that went back to their countries and got back to their businesses managed to launch any of the things they worked on? ‘Oh, we don't know. We don't track that.’

Saviano

So that's a problem. Okay.

Viki

So yeah, that's a really long show. Like if that's innovation theater, that's how long? That's a reality TV show. Like you're going for three to six months doing all this stuff that looks cool, but you have no idea whether it's going to create value for the organization or not. In the end, and so they had to go, Oh, it was like a pin drop, like, ‘oh man, yeah, of course we should be making sure that people are ready to receive these ideas and scale them once they go back to the countries.’

And so, it's a real important thing when we think about creating value.

Saviano

And if you need funding, another example could be we've seen this as well. If you need funding, for the ideas, maybe a good idea to arrange the funding prior to the hackathon, right? There's nothing worse than going through and having 100 ideas submitted, passing them down to a top three and then running into funding roadblocks.
And and that becomes a deterrent as you want to do the next one or as you want to embed innovation in the organization and that's, you know, people want to see results. They want to see that something actually came from the idea.

Viki

I mean, when you do the hackathon, you announce the winner and then the leadership is like, guess what? You've won. Ding, ding, ding, ding. The chance to write us a 35-page business plan so we can decide whether to fund your idea that just one. It was like, okay, so what with all these four. All right. So it's a bit of a struggle that you see inside large organizations.

Saviano

Absolutely. It's been such a great conversation.
I just want to remind our audience to go check out. You've had some great pieces in in Forbes. And also check out your book, Pirates in the Navy - How Innovators Lead Transformation. You can find that on your favorite online book ordering sites or maybe even in a real bookstore. Really enjoyed our conversation Tendayi. We typically end our podcast. We end Better Innovation with some rapid fire questions, quick questions, quick answers, kind of a fun way to end our conversation. What do you say you up for it?

Viki

Yeah, absolutely.

Saviano

Okay, here we go. First question, what book do you have on your nightstand? It's okay if you have your own book. I always have to say to our authors that come on the podcast, that's okay. We understand that you want to give them out and you may have a few. That's okay. But anybody else?

Viki

My wife would kill me if I had my own book on the night stand. That's right. We're done with your books, put them over there. So, I'm reading right now, actually, because I've started I've just joined a board with a South African education company, so I've just been invited to join the board.

It's my first foray into becoming a board member. So I'm reading the book Boards by Patrick Dunn right now. So, I've got them all queued up. Boads by Patrick Done. The next one is going to be the Fish - Ross from the heads just trying to dove into that a little bit more. So my role can be much more useful, you know, on the board that I'm now a member.

Saviano

Oh, wonderful. I've heard about boards. That's, that's a good reminder that's been on my list for a long time.

Viki

It's like, it's like this big like it's as big as the book by Ray Dalio. You know, the big.

Saviano

That's why I haven't started yet I think is like it's a commitment but I wonder if are you finding that it's helping in your innovation work to understand maybe it's back to the empathy comments, understand who's on the other side perhaps of some of the of the stuff that you do.

Viki

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But it's also making me realize something which is that I think that as innovation and thinkers and thought leaders you know, me and you both Jeff. Right, we've neglected the role of boards. You're right. Because if boards have a stewardship role and a fiduciary duty to ensure that the company survives long term, it's probably their job also to make sure that the company is building an innovation portfolio to make that happen.

It's not a strategic metric that we use to measure the success of boards. The notion of stewardship how important that is. And I love it. I get my best book recommendations. Somebody accused me the only reason we do the podcast is to get book recommendations. And it is one reason we do it. I love it. That's awesome.

Could I ask you a question, though, right before we just just though, it's it's my pleasure to see you.
Can I ask you the question, which is for both is stewardship and preservation or stewardship is helping companies navigate towards the future?

Saviano

Oh, that's such a great question. And well, I would combine them. Isn't that an element of stewardship? I think of stewardship as you're steering that ship that you have, maybe this comes back to our discussion.
You have an obligation to prepare your organization for the rough see ahead.

Viki

Exactly. So, yeah, exactly. And that's and that's part of that. But, you know, I mean, to what extent do boards do that or do they just tick the boxes of the Q1, let's go, Q2 done let's go almost like preserving the current structure and process of the organization and making sure that the governance works rather than really thinking strategically about what's what's going to of what's coming towards us in the House organization prepared to respond.

Saviano

There's definitely something there. I think it's that best practices for a boards in terms of it could be in forming new committees and responsibilities among board members to ensure that the entire board is held accountable for innovation and growth, just as you have audit committees and other committees that are formed for key responsibilities of a board who is looking to ensure that they're focused on innovation and growth and disruption.
And I think it's a great something that we have to explore. Maybe when you come back next time, how's that we can talk?

Viki

Yeah. After I sit on the board for a while and finish reading all the books I’m reading.

Saviano

Yeah. Okay. So that was all right. There we go. A couple more. Tell us about a historical figure who you admire.
So, I've been struggling with this one because I admire so many historical figures, like some of these political figures that they're are like really great academics, you know, the Einsteins of the world. And I admire his ability to focus on something and just think about it for a long time, something that's really lacking in terms of like just for me, it's a really important practice. The ability to think about a topic for a long time so you can get breakthrough insights. And that's something that I also truly admire. But I also admire like Nelson Mandela, right? Like what I admire about Nelson Mandela is the discipline to make sure you're doing the things that are appropriate for the future goals rather than getting the temporary satisfaction of a small victory today.
And so, like the way that he's stewarded and navigated South Africa out of that post-apartheid era, like you needed that bridge, somebody who had a point of view about the future community that he wanted to build and was happy to not enjoy the spoils of victory today and rather like spend all that political capital of bring Nelson Mandela on something that's more future facing.
And the question is for me, I'd like to what extent do we all have those sorts of disciplines you know, another book that was previously on my board, you know, the infinite game I find infinite. Right, which is how many of us are really playing the infinite game or we just we just playing like the five year game.
I'm feel for five years as long as when I leave, nothing is gone wrong. I don't care whether into the next guy, you know, how many of us are really playing the game that way. And so we truly admire a leaders like that.

Viki

Yeah, it is. That is so inspiring. And I just finished a great recent biography of Arthur Ashe, and I like I think I've learned as much as I know about South Africa and Nelson Mandela from what Arthur Ashe did in the country and his leadership.
And I found that so inspiring. I had the good fortune of visiting South Africa a few years ago and learning more. So that's wonderful.

Saviano

Yeah, inspiring. Okay, our last question. What do you see as our greatest opportunity to build back stronger when we emerge from this pandemic? So this will be our dose of optimism to leave our Better Innovation audience with greatest opportunity to build back stronger as we emerge.

One of the coolest things that can happen to a company if they suddenly realize that, ‘Oh, we can do that, we can do that. Like we can be agile, like we can respond quickly, we can test things and throw away things that don't work. We can build small teams and create new business where like we can do that, like we can do this.’
And the moment they realize they can do this and they start to think about, okay, how do we make sure we keep doing this?

Saviano

Yeah, that's like they learn something about themselves.

Viki

They learn something about themselves, right? Rather than focusing on the outcomes they created, oh, we make this business model or we make this move towards remote, you know, those things will survive for sure.
But how you got there told you something about your teams, your employees, your capabilities as an organization, and we're not talking enough about that. The more and more we start talking about that and celebrating that, I think we can really bounce back better and really get a sense of what we've become. You know, the benefits of going through a crisis.
They found a muscle that wasn't there, right? Some organization is off. And now I love that. What a positive message to end on that the opportunity to take those new muscles and go look for other problems to solve your organization now, whether you're in the private sector, maybe it's a governmental agency. It could be any organization, could be that nonprofit that you just joined the board that they found that they have new capabilities and now they're inspired to go tackle the next problem.
I think that's pretty cool. I think that's a wonderful message. Tendayi, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. What a gift for our better innovation audience. Really appreciate that. And I mentioned when I said, maybe you'll come back someday. We'd love to have you come back and share more of your stories.
This time on The Boardroom story, which is even more fascinating.

Saviano

I love it. You're a great storyteller. Thank you so much.

Viki

Thank you. Thank you so much for giving this company.

Presenters

Jeffrey Saviano

EY Global Emerging Technology Strategy & Governance Leader

Podcast

Episode 5

Duration

50m 6s

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.