Category: Management

Take my Intrapreneuring workshop at ePharma Summit! NYC, 24-Feb-2015

Join me for my intrapreneuring workshop at the 2015 ePharma Summit in New York City!

 Be Heard! A Hands-On Workshop for Future Leaders Ready to Take Action

When:     Tuesday, February 24, 2015 at 1:30PM
Where:    New York Hilton Midtown, 1335 Avenue of Americas, New York, NY 10019
Sign up using the discount code XP2006SPKSK and save 15% off the standard registration rates!

Beginning in 2012, Boehringer Ingelheim launched a global initiative to encourage more intrapreneurial spirit of employees and offer them a platform that enables generating and implementing disruptive innovations across the organization to either decrease expenditures or increase revenue. With a focus on developing and executing game changing ideas, part of this initiative is focused on providing associate-level executives with the tools they need to evaluate their ideas and best position them when pitching them to more senior management.

  • Frame your idea for a successful pitch
  • Create a compelling business case that resonates with senior management
  • Break through the red tape: navigating around internal barriers and finding allies

 

About ePharma

ePharma is the incubator for cultivating a diverse and innovative digital marketing plan to help you move your commercial initiatives forward.

Augment your expertise, dissect current biopharma trends, and uncover new opportunities at ePharma. Get the tools to build robust, cost efficient marketing campaigns over three days of tactical and strategic learning.

New for 2015:

  • Discover how innovations such as wearables, mHealth apps and nano technology impact health and patient care and what the best plays are for an integrated marketing campaign.
  • Learn how to pitch your entrepreneur product to a venture capitalist. Highlights include a checklist for sellers to address the needs of users.
  • Hear out-of-industry case studies from retail and publishing highlighting the success of using digital and traditional mediums.

 

Advertisement

Join me at the 5th Annual Pharma PPM Toolbox in Basel/Switzerland, Mar. 6, 2015

Join me at the 5th Annual Pharma PPM Toolbox in Basel/Switzerland on March 5-6, 2015!

Presentation at 3pm on March 6, 2015

Come to discuss my talk about “Changing employee mindset to boost collaboration and engagement for extreme business results”

  • How to overcome innovation hurdles in large organizations
  • How to build an entrepreneurial culture within your company to respond to change quickly
  • Measuring success beyond money – behavior change for best practices and boosting ROI

Workshop at 3:30pm on March 6, 2015

And take my Intrapreneuring Workshop “Building an innovation framework to design, launch and execute business projects”
The workshop participants experience the role of an intrapreneur to bring a project to life using disruptive methods and collaboration.

  • Innovation Barriers and Assessment
  • Becoming an Intrapreneur
  • Resistance, Sponsor and Team
  • Prototyping, Pitching and Investor Insights
  • Implementation considerations

About the Conference

Pharma companies stand on a cross-road for a few years now.  They can choose to stick to their old ways that will probably slowly kill their business or successfully adapt to the reality of continuously shrinking pipelines and growing obstacles.

The 5th Annual Pharma PPM Toolbox will provide you with fresh ideas and solutions from experts who work hard to keep up with uncompromising market demands.

The Future of Pharma: Calls Moving to Consults (video)

Calls Moving to Consults is a thought leadership video in the “10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015” series that was hosted by the stellar Richie Etwaru, Chief Digital Officer with Cegedim.

This video addresses the question:  How can the pharmaceutical industry reskill representatives to be knowledgeable consultants to physicians?

Today, sales expertise is not enough. The pharmaceutical representative needs to be a broker of information. Physicians now have very limited time – and dictate when they can meet with representatives, from whom they need comprehensive information that they can pass along to their increasingly educated patients.

In this video, Jo Ann Saitta, Chief Digital Officer of the CDM Group, Stephan Klaschka, Innovation and Healthcare Consultant, and moderator, Richie Etwaru, Chief Digital Officer at Cegedim, examine this shift and the challenges pharmaceutical companies may face in properly retraining their people. These challenges include: adopting a culture of learning agility; integrating silos of information; having the ability to serve up dynamic content; and training representatives to utilize technologies that will maximize their brief but demanding visits with physicians.

Use this link to watch all 10 videos in the series on YouTube directly – enjoy!

  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Communication moving to Collaboration
    • Angela Miccoli
    • Wendy Mayer
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Content moving to Context
    • James Corbett
    • Craig DeLarge
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Care moving to Cure
    • Michael DePalma
    • John Nosta
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Compliance moving to Culture
    • Bill Buzzeo
    • Gus Papandrikos
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Supply Chains moving to Supply Constellations
    • Ray Wang
    • Aron Dutta
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Customization moving to Configuration
    • Tracy Maines
    • Krishna Cheriath
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Customer moving to Consumer
    • Paul Kandle
    • Mark Stevens
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Calls moving to Consults
    • Jo Ann Saitta
    • Stephan Klaschka
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015 – Cloud moving to Crowd
    • Les Jordan
    • Krishnan Sridharan
  • 10 Inevitable Changes in Pharma 2015- Charity moving to Cause
    • Janet Carlson
    • Beth Bengtson

Eyeforpharma interview “Taking the entrepreneurial approach”

Read this insightful “Taking the entrepreneurial approach” interview conducted by Eyeforpharma on the impact of hierarchy and how executive mindset inhibits adapting to the rapidly changing commercial landscape.  It outlines how “intrapreneurs” and internal “angel investors” can get large, mature organizations moving again!

Read Intrapreneuring Case Study “Leading Innovation” by Ivey Business School!

The prestigious Ivey Business School of the Western University in Ontario, Canada, published an insightful new teaching case study on intrapreneuring and corporate innovation titled “Boehringer Ingelheim: Leading Innovation” in which the case writers, Professor J. Robert Mitchell, Ph.D., and Ramasastry Chandrasekhar, follow the footsteps of the newly appointed innovation director.

Meant to raise questions and serving as a learning opportunity for graduate students in academic program around the globe, this case study lifts the corporate curtain a bit to show how innovation through intrapreneuring really happens and decision points along the way.

Outline (by Ivey Publishing)

The newly appointed director of Innovation Management & Strategy at Boehringer Ingelheim, a German-based multinational pharmaceutical company, is finding his way forward in his firm’s new, first-of-its-kind role, which is central to the company’s growth rejuvenation strategy. His job has a threefold mandate: to build internal networks, to establish internal structures and to leverage internal ideas. His biggest challenge, however, may be transforming the organization’s DNA. The blockbuster business model that has characterized the company for decades is no longer appropriate. Instead, the firm needs to develop healthcare products available to end users over the counter. This shift in strategy requires innovative changes in distribution, delivery and customer focus. To accomplish this goal, he needs to institutionalize innovation so that it becomes sustainable. But in doing so, he must also identify the metrics for assessing progress. The case provides an opportunity for students to step into the shoes of an innovation leader, to develop an innovation roadmap for the organization in the face of uncertainty and to understand how to engage in innovation leadership at various levels of a global enterprise.

Learning Objective

This case has two key objectives. First, this case provides students an opportunity to grapple with the difficult decisions associated with innovation in an uncertain environment. Second, this case highlights that anyone has the ability to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset and to lead innovation. The case divides the attributes of an innovation leader into five components: observing, questioning, experimenting, networking and associating. It shows the real-life experiences of a manager doing seemingly routine activities, who evolved into a leader who transformed the DNA of a global enterprise. The case also provides a template of the tasks, responsibilities and value-added changes as an individual moves progressively within an enterprise from an operations manager to a senior manager to an innovation leader. This case can be used either toward the beginning or toward the end of any course that addresses innovation and creative thinking in a large organization. At the beginning of a course, it illustrates the challenges of acting in the face of uncertainty in a large organization. At the end of a course, the case provides an opportunity for students to apply what they have learned about innovation, entrepreneurial thinking and innovation leadership.

‘School for Intrapreneurs” finalist in eyeforpharma awards 2015!

We are honored by eyeforpharma’s announcement for Boehringer Ingelheim “School for Intrapreneurs” to be a Finalist for yet another award: the prestigious eyeforpharma Philadelphia awards 2015 in the Most Impactful Emerging or Global Initiative category!

One juror, for example, believes the Boehringer Ingelheim School for Intrapreneurs adds value beyond the pill to patients and customers: “Great program that ensures that the company keeps up to date and a competitive edge. I also like that everybody has the opportunity to contribute and participate.”

The winners will be announced on April 7th during the upcoming eyeforpharma Philadelphia 2015 conference (from April 7-8th, 2015, Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia, PA.), so join the conference and stay connected via Twitter at #efpPhilly

About the Awards

The eyeforpharma Philadelphia Awards recognize those in the pharmaceutical industry who are driving pharma forwards not just with higher short-term profits, but with better customer innovation, value and outcomes leading to longer-term success.

eyeforpharma’s mission is to make the pharmaceutical industry more open and valued, which means these awards are a literal translation of why we exist. It is our responsibility to shine a light on where pharma does well, to inspire others into similar or better action.

“Angel Investing as corporate venturing within a company” guest blog on CUREconnect

Angel Investing as corporate venturing within a company concludes the 3-posts mini-series as guest blogger for CURE.

However, it’s not over!  Please check in occasionally for more innovation and intrapreneuring-related posts in the future!

CURE serves as the bioscience cluster of Connecticut, a diverse network of small and large life and healthcare sciences companies, ranging in scope from therapeutics, to healthcare technology, to medical devices. Universities, government agencies, scientists, educators, mentors, students, entrepreneurs, business experts, service providers and investors join in to begin nucleate the breadth of the network.

As participants in CURE, we educate, cultivate entrepreneurship, support the build of bioscience companies and collaborate to ensure a sustainable, high-value bioscience and healthcare community that improves our quality of life and keeps the Connecticut community strong.

Join me at eyeforpharma’s Value Beyond the Pill Summit, Philadelphia, December 3, 2014

Join me for eyeforpharma’s Value Beyond the Pill Summit 2014 and come to my talk on “Build an intrapreneurial ecosystem to ensure your innovative services deliver the value required by patients” at 2:10PM on December 3, 2014.

Why attend other than hearing me speak?  🙂

The topics are around delivering patient value and reimburse your services by innovating your business model. A new way of healthcare is here; services are now an essential part of patient care and will help the pharma industry to make a bigger impact as a healthcare provider. Learn how to put successful services in place to gain better access, reduce costs and help your end-user, the patient. Find out what the most innovative and forward-thinking companies are doing to differentiate their brand in the most competitive times pharma have ever faced.

The Value Beyond the Pill Summit is held at the Wyndham Philadelphia Historic District Hotel, 400 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA, on December 3-4, 2014.

See the full speaker line up and agenda in the event brochure.

 

 

 

 

Meet me at Yale’s “Patients and Big Data in Healthcare: Deriving Value and Accelerating Innovation” Nov.11, 2014

Patients and Big Data in Healthcare: Deriving Value and Accelerating Innovation
Nov 11 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

REGISTER:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/patients-and-big-data-in-healthcare-deriving-value-and-accelerating-innovation-tickets-12475417309

CURE and Yale, in collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, presents “Patients and Big Data in Healthcare: Deriving Value and Accelerating Innovation.” In an increasingly digital age, healthcare stakeholders can access significant amounts of data and knowledge using various platforms. Critically, this “big data,” represents a vast quantity of complex and diverse information. While payers, providers, healthcare experts and the pharmaceutical industry have the capability to analyze this data to gain insight, this information can be overwhelming to patients. This BioHaven event, moderated by Richard Foster, has convened a panel of experts to explore the topic of “big data,” the role of the patient in data analytics, the role of payers and what actionable data represents. Further discussion will explore the state of the art, including discussing national hospital systems using big data and local ones in CT and at Yale. Finally, the discussion will conclude with discussion about effectively incorporating big data into operations and where the field is headed.

Special kudos to my valued colleague Faye Lindsay, who was instrumental in pulling this event together!

Some of the topics the moderator and panelists will consider:

Defining and Exploring the topic

  • Tell us what “big data” means to you and why it is important.  Give us one example which illustrates the best use of big data to date.
  • What is the role of the patient in data analytics?  Does it benefit them?  Do they naturally do it?  How error prone are the data they provide directly?
  • What is the role of the payer in all of this.  Can they get the data they need to better set rates?  Will “big data” help or hurt the payers?
  • What is actionable data?  What are the three major areas where we are making progress?

State of the Art

  • Where is the best state of the art in using data to improve outcomes in the US?  How do we know that is true?
  • What hospital systems or MCOs are most advanced?
  • How are we doing in CT compared to other states?  How do we know?
  • What is the state of the art in healthcare info tech/big data in the US.   Where?  Why?  What do we need to do to catch up?

Unanticipated Consequences

  • Will all this measurement result in intense, and from time time, unproductive rivalries between docs, or hospital systems?
  • How can the providers use “big data” and not put at risk the effectiveness of current medical care delivery processes which have takes years to define and perfect?

Specific Subtopics

  • Big Data and the bottom 5%
  • We know we spend $1.35 T on 5% of the population. Do we know who they are and how we can best treat them.  How much can we expect to reduce the cost, or improve the quality of the health care delivered to these patients?
  • Big Data and Quality
  • Integrating Big Data into Operations, effectively

What is coming?

  • Who is controlling the pace of advance in Big Data these days – Academia (who), the Payers (who?), the providers (who?) the Feds (who and who in HHS/CMS?)  What about the role of the National Cancer Hospitals.  Or other specialized (by disease/condition) providers (e.g. DaVita)

Moderator:

Richard N. Foster, PhD, Emeritus Director, McKinsey and Co; Lecturer, Yale School of Management.

Dr. Foster is an emeritus director of McKinsey & Company, Inc. where he was a Director and Senior Partner. While at McKinsey he founded several practices including the healthcare practice and the private equity practices, the technology practice and innovation practice. From 1995 to 1998 he led McKinsey’s worldwide knowledge development.

At Yale, Dr. Foster teaches “Managing In Times of Rapid Change” and serves as the Executive in Residence at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. Dr. Foster’s research interests are in the relationships between capital formation, innovation, and regulation. Dr. Foster has written two best-selling books: Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (1986) and Creative Destruction (2001), both of which were cited as among the “ten best books of the year” when they were published by the Harvard Business Review.

Dr. Foster’s work has appeared in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times as well as several dozen articles in research and popular journals. Dr. Foster was recognized as one of their ten “Masters of Innovation” in the past century. He was the external leader of the Concil on Foreign Relations Study Group on Technological Innovation and Economic Performance which led to the publication of Technological Innovation Economic Performance (2001, Princeton University Press).

Panelists:

Harlan Krumholz, MD, Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Professor of Investigative Medicine and of Public Health (Health Policy); Co-Director, Clinical Scholars Program; Director, Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.

Dr. Krumholz’s research focuses on improving patient outcomes, health system performance and population health. His work with health care companies has led to new models of transparency and data sharing. His work with the U.S. government has led to the development of a portfolio of national, publicly reported measures of hospital performance. These measures also became part of several provisions of the health reform bill. He is currently working with leaders in China on government-funded efforts to establish a national research and performance improvement network.

Dr. Krumholz is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology, the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the Board of Governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Rishi Bhalerao, MBA, Director of PatientsLikeMe, a free patient network and real-time health research platform.

At PatientsLikeMe Rishi manages major relationships with industry partners. Prior to joining PatientsLikeMe, Rishi spent several years as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and more recently, as an innovation consultant, at a firm started by Prof. Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School. He earned an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Engineering.

You Xi

Director of Business Analytics at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals (BI)and leads a team of analysts conducting analysis across all BI’s portfolio and communicating findings and strategic insights to internal stakeholders (Marketing, Sales, Managed Markets, Sr. Management etc.).

The key deliverables include using various data sources to measure performance, build promotional mix optimization modeling, behavior segmentation, portfolio optimization, etc.  Prior to BI, You was a consultant at ZS Associates and then held various management roles in the pharmaceutical industry including Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Novartis.

Michael Matteo

Mike Matteo is chief growth officer at Optum, where he is responsible for creating and enabling growth across the company. Matteo focuses on the needs and opportunities of Optum’s customers and how the company can deliver creative, innovative solutions that meet their objectives. Prior to bringing his passion for modernizing the health care system to Optum in 2012, Matteo served for four years as chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare National Accounts, where he expanded the company’s industry-leading position in the large-employer marketplace. Prior to becoming CEO, Matteo led business development efforts for UnitedHealthcare National Accounts, where previously he worked in product development and was instrumental in designing and launching the company’s first consumer-driven product innovations. He joined UnitedHealth Group in 1997 as a strategic account executive, helping many of the company’s largest employer clients meet their health care objectives.

Before joining UnitedHealth Group, Matteo was with Physicians Health Services, where he served the needs of major clients as an underwriting director and senior account executive. He began his career serving in multiple roles with Traveler’s Insurance Companies. Matteo graduated magna cum laude with honors from the College of the Holy Cross, and participated in the Columbia University Executive Management Program. He is on the boards of the MetroHartford Alliance, Hartford YMCA, and Connecticut Science Center, and served as chairperson of the Greater Hartford Arts Council Capital Campaign.

Don’t miss Gati Dharani on ‘Wearables for Health Intervention in Aging Population’ @APHA, Nov.17, New Orleans

It’s a billion dollar question: How can we use wearable mobile devices for better health outcomes in the aging population?  Join my valued colleague and HITLAB innovator Gati Dharani and her team revealing newest research in sights on “Wearable fitness tracker intervention increases physical activity in Baby Boomers” at the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) HEALTHOGRAPHY 142nd Annual Meeting and Exposition on November 15-19, 2014, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Why is this a billion dollar question? – The traditional business model of the pharmaceutical industry is broken.  The focus shifts to incentivize patient-centric outcomes, prevention and behavior change in the global battle against a mounting wave of chronic diseases such as diabetes.  In search for a new business “beyond the pill” the pharmaceutical industry joins other stakeholders in the healthcare system to align and pull in this same direction.  First data-driven results are highly anticipated – well, here they are, so don’t miss this milestone event!

Meet me at the 9th Annual Health Care Delivery and Management Case Challenge at Columbia University, Nov. 8, 2014

Join the 9th Annual Health Care Delivery and Management Case Challenge at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health on Sat. Nov. 8, 2014!
I will be acting as juror once again – always a fun a insightful event with the following goals:

  • Create opportunity for students to apply classroom learning to a real-world healthcare case, using strategic decision making to solve health service delivery problems
  • Allow students from the three Alliance schools, Business, Medicine, and Public Health, to collaborate in a cross-functional way
  • Utilize faculty from the three Alliance Schools to advise teams.

For more information/rules and to register your team for the competition, please contact Prof. Paul Thurman, Executive Director of the Alliance, at Paul.Thurman@Columbia.edu

‘School for Intrapreneurs” nominated for 5th annual Corporate Entrepreneur Awards

We are honored that the Boehringer Ingelheim “School for Intrapreneurs” got nominated for Market Gravity announce the fifth annual Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York.

The awards will be held at an inspiring new venue, 7 World Trade Center, and include the opportunity to explore some of the top corporate innovations in North America, network with innovation leaders, and hear from our guest speaker from Virgin Galactic.

The awards recognize and celebrate the achievements of individuals and teams who are working within large companies to deliver game changing innovation and growth.

Meet me at the 5th annual Corporate Entrepreneur Awards, New York City, Nov. 4, 2014

After four successful years, Market Gravity is proud to announce the fifth annual Corporate Entrepreneur Awards, and this year the Awards are coming to New York.

The awards will be held at an inspiring new venue, 7 World Trade Center, and include the opportunity to explore some of the top corporate innovations in North America, network with innovation leaders, and hear from our guest speaker from Virgin Galactic.

The awards recognize and celebrate the achievements of individuals and teams who are working within large companies to deliver game changing innovation and growth.

“Intrapreneuring: Building an innovation eco-system with the School for Intrapreneurs” guest blog on CUREconnect

Intrapreneuring: Building an innovation eco-system with the “School for Intrapreneurs” continues the mini-series as guest blogger for CURE.

My first post “Why large organizations struggle to innovate” looked at innovation obstacles in large organizations.  This second post discusses on how to overcome these obstacles and followed by another successful approach covered in my next post in few weeks.

CURE serves as the bioscience cluster of Connecticut, a diverse network of small and large life and healthcare sciences companies, ranging in scope from therapeutics, to healthcare technology, to medical devices. Universities, government agencies, scientists, educators, mentors, students, entrepreneurs, business experts, service providers and investors join in to begin nucleate the breadth of the network.

As participants in CURE, we educate, cultivate entrepreneurship, support the build of bioscience companies and collaborate to ensure a sustainable, high-value bioscience and healthcare community that improves our quality of life and keeps the Connecticut community strong.

“Why large organizations struggle to innovate” guest blog on CURE

“Why large organizations struggle to innovate” is my first post in a mini-series as a guest blogger for CURE.  This first post looks at obstacles large organizations face to innovate, while the following posts will look at ways on how to overcome these obstacles over the next few weeks.

CURE serves as the bioscience cluster of Connecticut, a diverse network of small and large life-sciences and healthcare companies, ranging in scope from therapeutics, to healthcare technology, to medical devices. Universities, government agencies, scientists, educators, mentors, students, entrepreneurs, business experts, service providers and investors join in to begin to nucleate the breadth of the network.

As participants in CURE, we educate, cultivate entrepreneurship, support the build of bioscience companies and collaborate to ensure a sustainable, high-value bioscience and healthcare community that improves our quality of life and keeps the Connecticut community strong.

Diamonds in the Rough: Identifying Talent

It is not without irony when a leadership team complains about their talent.  As the saying goes, “Leaders deserve the talent they hired.”

Looking into the Abyss – Not kidding!

Let me give you an idea how bad it can get. Here is a real-life scenario I was asked at address as a consultant not long ago:  A global leadership team identified the need to diversify their management across a distributed, global division.  Business results were lagging, bureaucracy stifling and fresh ideas nowhere to be seen let be implemented.  Despite an outspoken commitment to Diversity and Inclusion, the ‘corporate immune system’ and ‘group-think’ resisted much needed change with repercussions for those questioning the status quo or thinking differently out loud.  Data-driven paralysis by analysis was the daily mode of operation. – You get the picture.

The leadership team had tried filling open positions by hiring the usual ‘best and brightest’ with a focus on expert skills and solutions they would bring from their previous employer – it did not solve the problem.  It was common practice to hire staff for their expertise, primarily; the term used was “to hit the ground running.”

As if the situation was not bad enough already, the brightest brains have left or where about to leave.  They so drained the ‘leaky pipeline’ of talent even more.  Since we know that “talent attracts talent” also the opposite appears quite likely.  Thereby, the quality of leadership team overall weakens and entails the nasty downstream effects for the staff and the organization as a whole.  Obviously the situation was home-grown, which added a sensitive political dimension the whole situation.
The blunt question stuck with me, does the top leaders actually know what talent they need?  What are their criteria for ‘talent’ when they search, so you would recognize it when you see it?  And, do they have the guts of hiring someone who actually looks at things and truly thinks  differently, comes up with unorthodox solutions and possibly has a very different profession background, career path and experiences?
Let’s leave this ‘case study’ here and step back to look at the bigger picture.

Fighting the wrong battle?

Sadly, there were many hidden assumptions at work that never surfaced or articulated.  For example, the steepest careers were made by employees sharing the same professional discipline as their leaders, so the assumption was that only a specific professional background would qualify a candidate.  Another ironclad assumption was that talent is hard to find – after all we read about this “war for talent” raging out there, as Steven Hankin of McKinsey coined it so dramatically, right?

I respectfully disagree.  While it makes sense to hire from the outside for certain purposes such as short-term for specific skills or experience for a project or long-term for the right mindset and development potential, for example, it makes little sense to me to neglect the talent you already have.  My take was not that there is a lack of talent but a lack of being able to identifying talent.

Talent Mismanagement 

It seems that talent acquisition and development have eroded from an an art form to a dry and rigid process that -obviously- doesn’t work all that well for this organization.  Little attention was paid to talent identification and retention within the organization or mindset and cultural fit of candidates, for example.

Here are just some examples for common practices that inhibited internal talent to develop and grow – and eventually drove employees away:

  • Internal applicants for open positions were in practice only considered when the already did the job they applied for.  How is this supposed to work? Where is the potential for existing staff to develop and seize opportunities?
    We know little about new hires but we a know a lot about our existing employees. What may look like an advantage for the employee often plays out the other way: This knowledge can induce a bias and limit our employees getting opportunities when we may still see them as ‘corporate infants’ despite many years of tenure; like parents who can be blindsided of their kids growing up and being ready for the challenge that we tend more easily to entrust a stranger with.
  • Graduates fresh out of college were preferred over employees meeting the job requirements, for a trainee rotation program, for example. This was despite the fact that the company often had paid for the employees’ advanced degrees.  These employees came with relevant work experience and existing networks within the organization which minimized on-boarding efforts.  They already knew the company culture and what to expect. So these employees would not get the job despite their qualifications. – How crazy is that? I call this ‘talent mismanagement.’
    Take an even closer look: These employees went back to school in parallel to their day job, family, etc. They had proven their tenacity and commitment to develop personally as well as for the company over years – and are denied a chance to apply their new skills.  What a waste! No wonder the talent pipeline leaked!

Three ways to identify talent you already have

Traditionally, talent identification is seen as a top-down process where executives pick employees from their pool based on who they believe has potential.  The selected ‘talent’ then receives training, development or career opportunities to prepare them for their future leadership role. This was the model applied leading up to the sad situation of the case study above. It favors a bias of group-think and appointing or hiring people like yourself instead of focusing to find the best person for the job.

What if we looked at and selected internal ‘talent’ differently?  What if we leveled the playing field to allow any employee to prove themselves and then select talent based on merits?

Here are three proposals on how to identify talent you already have within your organization but overlooked in the past:

  1. Look closely at your employees who went back to school or underwent a significant challenge on top of their core job to learn and develop themselves, such as the ones mentioned above that graduated with advanced degrees in parallel to their day work. This are tough cookies, self-starters, driven to self-improve and seeking career opportunities; ignore them and they will leave.
    Read also:  How to retain talent under the new workplace paradigm?
  2. Build a School for Intrapreneurs: Lessons from a FORTUNE Global 500 company as a merit-based pipeline for leaders, talent and change agents.  Our battle-hardened graduates have experienced resistance and found ways to form diverse teams and build supportive networks on their way to implementing their ideas.
    Read also  How to create innovation culture with diversity! and  Innovation drives Diversity&Inclusion 2.0
  3. Seed-fund ideas that meet desirable criteria for disruptive innovation for a proof-of-concept by introducing, for example,  Angel Investing within the Company – Insights from an Internal Corporate Venture Capitalist. We have seen colleagues returning with more great ideas after their first one got funded. It works like releasing creative breaks and empowering employees to take charge.

Meaningful change is likely to meet resistance within the organization. It takes determination to change established talent management practices. It takes guts to walk the walk despite a general intellectual agreement.
Time will tell how the above case study plays out for this particular organization, i.e. if the recommendations made will be adopted – or if this consulting appointment degrades to just a feel-good exercise without consequences, since taking action requires real leadership.

German Innovation Study confirms Intrapreneuring Increases Innovative Mindset

German Innovation Study confirms Intrapreneuring increases Employees’ Innovative Mindset

German researchers Philipp Gellert and Martin Müller of the Business Innovation and Change Management Dept. of the University of Applied Science in Munich, Germany (Hochschule München) published their international business consulting study “Konzept für Führungskräfte zur Implementierung einer Innovationsstrategie” (in German language only) in summer 2014.

The otherwise mostly self-explanatory graphics (see below) shows how different approaches increase employee innovation mindset (vertical axis) with long-term impact (“Langfristig”) in the upper right.  The study implicitly confirms the power of intrapreneurial and disruptive approaches.  Note that it explicitly mentions several intrapreneurial approaches I developed and also covered in my www.OrgChanger.com blog in more detail:

"Konzept für Führungskräfte zur Implementierung einer Innovationsstrategie" business consulting study by Philipp Gellert and Martin Müller, Business Innovation and Change Management, University of Applied Science Munich (Hochschule München), Germany, 2014
Graphics on page 57 shows “School for Intrapreneurs” and “Angel Investing” as long-term shifters of employee innovation mindset in the upper right corner!

 

 

Innovation drives Diversity&Inclusion 2.0

The traditional world of corporate Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) is being disrupted by a new take on D&I and combining it with innovation and talent management.  What some perceive as a threat to the D&I establishment may just be the next step of evolution that could invigorate and drive D&I to new heights.

Though not an entirely novel approach (see also How to create innovation culture with diversity!) the new thinking gains traction.  As this could play out in different ways and only time will tell what worked, here are my thought on where we are heading.

Struggles of the  Front Runner

Many traditional D&I programs, let’s call them “version 1.0” of D&I, struggle transitioning beyond a collection of affinity groups, tallying corporate demographics and competing for D&I awards to post on their webpage.  In these traditional D&I programs ‘diversity’ is often understood to be reflected by more or less visible differences among individuals at the workplace while ‘inclusion’ translates to supporting defined sub-populations of employees through, for example, establishing affinity groups.

The United States is seen as the front runner of the D&I movement.  D&I has been around in the U.S. corporate world for decades.  For historic and demographic reasons it hones in on removing obstacles for minorities at the workplace supported also by strict legislature and execution; exercising Affirmative Action, for example.

This legacy in the U.S. lends itself to an inside focus on organizations that became the backbone of the traditional D&I programs.  It comes down to the question ‘what can or should the organization do for specific groups of people’ defined by ethnicity, gender, age, sexual preference, faith, disability, war history and so on.  Apparently, it still is work in progress as, for example, Silicon Valley just recently got on the public radar, which stirred up the debate afresh along the lines of D&I 1.0; see Google releases breakdown on the diversity of its workforce.

Stuck in the ‘Diversity Trap’?

The inside focus and minority messaging of D&I 1.0, however, can be limiting when D&I erodes to a process of ‘doing things right’ by pushing for quotas, ‘checking boxes’ and inflating variations of terminology perceived as ‘politically correct’.  This can in fact be different from ‘doing the right thing’ for the company overall, its employees as well as the affinity groups and their constituency.   It should not surprise that Affinity groups can be (and often get) stigmatized and perceived as self-serving and self-centered social networks without significant and measurable business impact.

Under this paradigm these D&I 1.0 programs struggle to get serious attention, support and funding from executives beyond operating on a minor level to ‘keep the lights on’ more for public image purposes than business drive.  The fundamentals seem to get forgotten: in the end, a business exists to generate a profit, so less profitable activities are likely to be discontinued or divested.  It’s a symbiosis and to say it bluntly: without healthy business there is no D&I program and no affinity groups.  When this symbiosis get lopsided, D&I 1.0 gets stuck in the trap.

D&I 2.0

“Diversity” is catching on beyond the United States in Europe, for example, where many countries do not have share a highly heterogeneous demographic composition, for example.  Here, companies can start with a fresh approach jumping straight to D&I 2.0 – and many do!  It reminds me of developing countries installing their first phone system by skipping the landlines and starting right away with mobile phones.

The 2.0 internal focus corresponds to hiring workers that truly think differently and have different backgrounds and life experiences some of which overlaps with D&I 1.0 affinity roots.  In addition, there is also an external focus putting the staff to work with a clear business proposition and reaching even beyond the organization.  So here a candidate would be hired or employee promoted for their different thinking (2.0) rather than more visible differences (1.0).

While need remains for affinity groups to tend to their members needs within the organization, the “new” D&I 2.0 opens to shift focus to go beyond the organization.  It goes along the lines of a statement President John F. Kennedy became famous for and that I tweaked as follows: “Don’t ask what the COMPANY can do for you ask what you can do for the COMPANY AND ITS CUSTOMERS.”

D&I 2.0 gears towards actively contributing and driving new business results in measurable ways for the better of the employees as well as the organization and its customers.  A visible indicator for D&I 2.0 affinity groups helping their constituency beyond company walls is affinity groups identifying and seizing business opportunities specific to their constituency.  They translate the opportunity and shepherd it trough the processes of the organization to bring it to fruition.  For example, affinity groups are uniquely positioned to extending and leveraging their reach to relating customer segments in order to identify ‘small elephant’ business opportunities; see How to grow innovation elephants in large organizations.

The D&I 2.0 approach demonstrates sustainable business value which is why D&I 2.0 sells much easier to executives. It makes a compelling business case that contributes to new business growth, the life blood of every company.

Challenging Transition

U.S. companies stuck in D&I 1.0 are hard pressed to keep up with the D&I 2.0 developments and overcome their inner struggle and resistance.  With decades of legacy, D&I 1.0 programs in many organizations lack the vision and ability to make a compelling business case, to develop a sound strategy as well as capability and skill to implement it effectively.  This is the requirement, however, to truly see eye-to-eye with senior executives and get their full support.  This can become a serious disadvantage in the markets relating to products and customers but also in attracting talent.

In the end, the saying holds true that “talent attracts talent” and all organizations compete over talent to compete and succeed.  Therefore, a D&I 2.0 program combines business focus and talent management while tying it back to the core of diversity and inclusion: Fostering diverse thinkers and leveling the playing field for all employees.  This requires a level playing field that offers the same opportunities to all employees, which is the real challenge.

How do you level the playing field effectively in a large organization?  How this will be implemented becomes the differentiating success factor for companies transitioning to D&I 2.0!

Here is a example 2.0-style for a level playing filed that has its roots in the D&I affinity group space yet opened up to include the entire workforce.  It empowers and actively engages employees while leveraging diversity, inclusion and talent management for innovative solutions with profitable business outcomes.  It may take a minute or two to see the connection between D&I, talent and disruptive innovation but it is at work right here in the School for Intrapreneurs: Lessons from a FORTUNE Global 500 company.

~~~

Previous posts relating to innovation and employee affinity groups / employee resource groups (ERG) / business resource groups (BRG):

“Better before Worse” – are you dropping off the cliff?

Most change initiatives fail.  Statistics from MIT research suggest that for leaders managing change the ‘capability trap’ is the single major failure mode.  So, what is this trap, how is it set up and, more importantly, how to avoid it?

As a quick disclaimer, the charts and examples are schematic and simple to get my point across.  This is a blog, not a textbook.

Under pressure

New leaders get appointed to solve a business problem such as improving poor results of sorts.  So from the start the new guy or gal is under pressure to perform and succeed.  In politics the common public expectations are to see result or bold actions within the first 100 days – and business is not known for being less demanding.

Tough Choice

So, soon enough the new leader faces a tough decision. Which choice do you favor?

  1. “Worse before better” means doing “the right thing.” However, this approach may not deliver sustainable results fast and is a hard sell to impatient or less reasonable superiors.
  2. “Better before worse” is a less stellar route to reap short-term benefits and lessen the immediate pressure but it comes at a price:  knowing that the this choice is not sustainable and will cost more later down the road.
By the way, this is really not rocket-science but straight-forward logic yet many executives still get seduced by the low hanging fruit, namely “better before worse”… so stay with me for a moment to see what happens next.

“Better before Worse” 

It starts out easy: you cut cost all over the place and look like a hero immediately.  For example, you could reduce machine maintenance or cut the employee training budget.  Schematically it looks somewhat like this:

Cutting costs equals savings
Cutting costs equals savings

What happens is that not only your balance sheet looks better quickly, you also increase productivity short-term.  The machines keep running and people keep on working, so in the short-term you produce the same output with less input.

After short-term gains, productivity plummets
After short-term gains, productivity plummets

Productivity and the Capability Inertia

The problems arrive with a delay when ‘capability inertia’ starts kicking in.  So here is what happens:  You didn’t maintain the machines yet the machines keep working – for while. Then, they break really bad and it takes a lot more money to get them fixed than having them maintained.  It’s like not putting oil in your car’s engine and driving on – somewhere down the road the engine will die on you.  You will have to spend money to fix it and live with the downtime while fixing the machines.

With a delay, the organization's capabilities suffer and are very costly to regain later
With a delay, the organization’s capabilities suffer and regaining them later proves very costly

At that time you find yourself in deep water and all your previous savings go up in smoke together with what else you didn’t budget for.

On the people side with employee training, for example, the effect is quite similar but often less obvious: You save the money for keeping them up-to-date with new technology, skilled, etc. and saved short-term.  The real problem is your staff losing its professional capabilities to continue to perform on a high level in the face of competition or adapting to changing markets and environments.  External focus comes with a cost of doing business – that you just eliminated, thereby fostering group-think and internal focus.  Getting the crew back in shape later on takes effort and is expensive: not only will you have to train them but also they are unproductive during the training period.

Furthermore, shortsighted cost-cutting inhibits seizing business growth opportunities such as ‘small elephant’ projects (see also How to grow innovation elephants in large organizations), which can jeopardize the business foundation for the future.

With it comes the ‘leaky pipeline’ effect where valuable talent leaves.  It is the best people who leave first (see How to retain talent under the new workplace paradigm?) if they see sweeping cost savings affecting critical investments in the company’s future capabilities and not surgically cuts.  Talent does not wait it out on a sinking ship.  If you are unfamiliar with the horrendous costs of turnover, check with your Human Resources person to get a sense for your burn-rate!

Despite all of this, many managers still embrace “better before worse” as the scenario of choice and believe they are “doing it the right way”.

Rewards for all the Wrong Reasons?

Unfortunately, performance and compensation frameworks in mature organizations usually support this easier approach.  ‘Success’ is typically measured quarterly or yearly as a basis for bonuses, raises or promotions.  The typical incentive systems don’t take long-term sustainability into account enough (other than stock options for publicly traded companies, for example) to change behavior.

Instead, rewards keep getting handed out on a short-term basis of evaluation.  Research showed many times over that this approach simply doesn’t work for more challenging jobs of the 21st century.  Don’t believe it? – Check out Dan Pink’s famous 18 minute TED talk “The Puzzle of Motivation” relating to the candle problem and motivation research.

As a bottom line, if don’t plan to hang around to ride out the consequences of your choice (or even have a golden parachute ready), “better before worse” appears an attractive shortcut to short-term success.  Deep down, however, you know it was not the right thing to do.  Your staff, your successor, and sometimes the entire company will suffer and face the consequence when you are gone. – So what could you do instead?

“Worse before Better” 

There is an alternative choice: the stony road of “worse before better” by doing what is right.  For leaders accepting responsibility this may be the only choice.

Right from the starts is gets tough: you increase cost to invest where things need to change most, be it people or technology. For example, invest in getting the best people to do the job and train them as well as you can for the challenges to come and step out of their way.  Establish or overhaul technology, processes and managerial framework needed to deliver results reliably.

Invest in future capabilities
Invest in future capabilities first
This takes time and money, so as you would expect, productivity suffers at first but then, if the change is executed well, recovers and quickly exceeds the additional costs by far while you deliver outstanding results reliably.
It is important here not to address all problems at one time but to prioritize and tackle change in smaller steps.  Mind that change is a development process that doesn’t lend itself to shortcuts.
With a delay, productivity recovers sustainably
After dipping down at first, productivity grows sustainably
While this is clearly the more sustainable strategy the tough part is getting your stakeholders and superiors to buy in (especially if they are looking for short-term “better before worse” results) by setting realistic expectations.  After all, “worse before better” is a sustainable basis for a business model where “better before worse” is not.
You may also have to accept not receiving the short-term performance incentives for doing the right thing if your incentive system does not reward building capabilities.  However, there are other kinds of meaningful rewards to consider.  They range from feeling good about withstanding the temptation, doing good for the company and its employees, as well as possibly getting attention from more forward-thinking parties who may want to hire you in the future as a leader with guts and brains.

Xbox’s Hollywood Bust – when culture eats strategy for breakfast

Shut down

It’s not only successful innovations that can get shut down (see “Shut down! Why Successful Innovations Die“) but also those that don’t get a chance to take of in the first place:  In the small print of Microsoft’s recent announcement to eliminate 18,000 jobs (mainly in the light of the Nokia acquisition) you could also find 200 jobs cut to end the Xbox Hollywood aspirations.

After a history of failures entering the hardware sector, Microsoft struck gold with its powerful Xbox gaming console series powered by popular games such as the epic HALO. Long forgotten seem the times of the “PocketPC” handheld to rival the PalmPilot or the “Zune” MP3 player to dwarf Apple’s iPod.  (Let’s keep the Surface tablets with its awful Windows 8 mosaic tile interface out of the equation for now – even a recent promotion is just a sad parody.)  

Without doubt, the Xbox is a success, Microsoft’s media flagship.  It faces serious competition, so creative and disruptive solutions are needed to dominate the console market.

Beyond gaming

To expand on this solid Xbox console foundation and fend off competitors, the idea was to produce engaging and original video content.  This added value would expand the Xbox platform to broaden Xbox attractiveness and deepen customer loyalty by appealing to its gamer audience in new ways.  The gap between gaming and film converged over the past years when new game productions became sophisticated, quality productions with celebrity actors and voice overs, music by top Hollywood composers, high-end visual effects and not only budgets to rival studio movie productions but revenue exceeding blockbuster movies.

Inspired by, for example, Netflix’s success in producing original content such as “Orange” and “House of Cards,”  this strategy looked very promising.  Well equipped with CBS’ highly accomplished Nancy Tellem and ties to Steven Spielberg, the Microsoft Hollywood team of 200 was up to a great start – or so it seemed.

Two years in, however, the there was very little to show for, so Microsoft finally divested.

– What went wrong?

Culture Clash

A key inhibitor for the Hollywood team, so it turned out, was clashing organizational cultures between Microsoft and the quick-paced and decision-friendly media world Tellem was used to from CBS.  Nanny Tellem learned the hard way that effectiveness of decision-making at the lower hierarchical levels and fast execution was not the strong suit of the established culture, red-tape processes and deep hierarchy of the Redmond software giant.  Down four levels in hierarchy under the CEO, Microsoft’s convoluted processes diluted Tellem’s authority and effectiveness.  It slowed down decisions to a point where the ambitious and energetic start-up became practically shackled and impotent to operate effectively in the media world.

Even the best strategy cannot be executed when unaligned with organizational culture or, as Peter Drucker has put it so famously, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Culture is what most employees say and do routinely.  It translates into a company’s processes, structures, systems, etc.  This is why failing to understand or outright ignoring culture can be so disastrous for leaders.  From my experience, the magic sauce is in aligning corporate culture and strategy with the passion of competent employees.

Learnings

Microsoft’s Hollywood adventure is just one more example how disruptive innovation struggles when measured and governed by processes of a mature and bureaucratic organization with matrix structure.  With reigns held too close and not leaving room to experiment, innovation suffers, as this missed opportunity for Microsoft demonstrates.

“Hindsight is 20/20” people say and in all honesty, other factors may have contributed too, but looking at it from the outside, perhaps this train wreck could have been prevented had Tellem paid closer attention to the culture of her new employer and ‘how we do business around here.’

Cultural fit with conductive structures and processes downstream are serious business factors that often get overlooked and then backfire for the blind-sided executive.  – Only perhaps there could have been a proper Hollywood ending.

After all, disruptive innovations is a delicate flower that needs some room to flourish – especially in mature organizations.

Want more?

Related posts on organizational culture include:

%d bloggers like this: