Creating a Culture of Innovation Through Empowerment

Digital Transformation is the creation of a continuously learning and adapting business model (AI-driven and human-empowered) that seeks to identify, codify, and operationalize actionable customer, product, and operational insights (propensities) in order to optimize (reinvent) operational efficiency, enhance customer value creation, mitigate operational and compliance risk, and create new revenue opportunities.

Okay, now that we've covered all the economics, data, and analytics mumble jumble, let's focus on the real secret sauce to any digital transformation journey—empowering your people.

This will be the most difficult chapter in the book because it forces the reader to embrace a very uncomfortable and even troubling concept—ambiguity. Ambiguity—the quality of being open to more than one interpretation—is the key to human, societal, and organizational evolution. If everyone has the...

Team Empowerment History Lesson

In the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, British Admiral Lord Nelson faced the superior forces of the combined French and Spanish naval Armada. The French and Spanish naval Armada was determined to clear a path for Napoleon to invade England, and only Lord Nelson stood in their way. Lord Nelson was badly outnumbered and outgunned, so he needed to reframe his battle strategy to overcome these debilitating disadvantages.

In 1805, the standard method of naval warfare involved ships lining up parallel to each other to maximize the effectiveness of their cannons. Naval battle in the "Age of Sail" was a simple game of math—firing cannonballs more quickly than your opponent was the best way to ensure victory. Yes, the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for naval battle success could have been "shots per minute" based on the number of cannons and the crew's ability for rapid reloading.

Given his predicament, Lord Nelson decided...

Empowerment #1: Internalize the Organization's Mission

Gaining buy-in to the organization's Mission Statement requires that everyone be able to internalize what that mission statement means to them, their jobs, and their personal principles.

Make sure that everyone in the organization—and I mean E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E—understands the organization's Mission Statement (and it will help to have a simple-to-understand one). A Mission Statement should not be long (it should pass the 30-second elevator test) and not contain non-descript, non-committal weasel words. A Mission Statement should clearly articulate why an organization exists.

Here are some of my favorites:

• TED: Spread ideas.
• JetBlue: To inspire humanity—both in the air and on the ground.
• American Heart Association: To be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives.
• Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire...

Empowerment #2: Speak the Language of the Customer

Speaking the Language of the Customer ensures that everyone not only has the same customer-centricity focus but speak the same language that the customer uses (that is, avoids internal acronyms and buzzwords).

Establish a common language so that everyone uses the same words to describe the same goals, assets, and actions. To institutionalize the "language of the customer" in your organization, I recommend embracing the empowering and innovative discipline of Design Thinking.

Design Thinking is a customer-centric discipline that necessitates an open and collaborative mindset that leverages facilitated ideation techniques and tools to discover and validate unmet customer needs within the context and constraints of a specific customer problem or opportunity.

Design Thinking is a highly iterative yet scalable process that starts by:

• Empathizing with the targeted customer's challenge.
• Defining...

Empowerment #3: Empowering Teams Through Organizational Improvisation

Organizational Improvisation yields flexible and malleable teams that can maintain operational integrity while morphing the team's structure and execution in response to the changing needs of the situation.

Like a great soccer team (think of the United States Women's World Cup championship soccer team…like watching ballet on the soccer field) or an enthralling jazz ensemble (like Miles Davis or Freddie Hubbard…since I did play jazz trumpet in college), successful organizations embrace Organizational Improvisation or improv. They exhibit the ability to morph the team's structure and operating plans in real-time in response to changing customer and/or operational conditions while maintaining operational integrity.

Teams win games and change the world, not individuals. Yes, there are individuals (Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk) who can evangelize...

Empowerment #4: Embrace an "AND" Mentality

"AND" Mentality embraces differing perspectives to blend, bend, and break apart the different ideas to create something more powerful and more empowering than what was there before.

Another history lesson (I always loved history in middle school): If you had challenged car manufacturers in 1979 to increase horsepower while also improving mileage per car, the automobile executives would have looked at you like you had lobsters crawling out of your ears. However, that is exactly what happened.

The car manufacturers in the 1970s operated with an "OR" mentality—customers could have cars with good "fuel mileage OR horsepower" but not both. However, the automobile industry was forced to reframe this mindset when the U.S. government mandated higher vehicle fuel mileage in 1975 and then again in 2007. And instead of going out of business, car manufacturers (or at least some of them—I&apos...

Empowerment #5: Embrace Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking is the judicious and objective analysis, exploration, and evaluation of an issue or a subject to form a viable and justifiable judgment.

Teaching my university students to embrace critical thinking is crucial for creating our future business and civic leaders. Likewise, it is also crucial for achieving digital transformation. Here is what I expect of my students with respect to mastering critical thinking:

1. Never accept the initial answer as the right answer. It's too easy to take the initial result and think that it's good enough. But good enough is usually not good enough, and one needs to invest the time and effort to explore if there is a better "good enough" answer.
2. Be skeptical. Never accept someone's "statement of opinion" as "fact." Learn to question what you read or hear. It's very easy to accept at face value whatever someone tells you, but that...

Summary

Lord Nelson empowered ship captains who were "entrepreneurs of battle" by creating agile, malleable teams that could collaborate, share, and learn, based upon a common mission, shared language, and a culture of trust, openness, and fearlessness. Organizations that are seeking to achieve their digital transformation must also empower "entrepreneurs of innovation" by creating agile, malleable teams that can collaborate, share, and learn, based upon a common mission, a shared language of the customer, and a culture of team empowerment.

My final point in the book is this: You have all the tools and skills necessary to be successful, but ultimately your success is on you. The minute you start to blame others for your problems, you abdicate control of your life. Don't do it. Own your mistakes, and you will own your future.

I have failed several times in my life, and each failure has not only tested my faith and resolve but has provided valuable lessons...

Further Reading

1. GroupThink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
2. Age of Sail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Sail
3. Battle of Trafalgar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_at_the_Battle_of_Trafalgar
4. Kyle Stock and David Ingold, America's Cars Are Suddenly Getting Faster and More Efficient, 17 May 2017: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-17/america-s-cars-are-all-fast-and-furious-these-days

Homework

1. How well do you understand and speak the language of your customers?

   

2. How are you removing impediments and empowering organizational improvements?

   

3. How are you building an "AND" culture around personal accountability?