What Can We Do To Wake Them Up?
One of our colleagues has a Friday morning ritual that he keeps as many Fridays as he can, meeting a group of friends at a Starbucks location for an hour of conversation that usually has a point. The friends all work in product development for a large company that now faces intense competition in its long-established product lines.
On a recent Friday all these friends were discouraged. The previous day their company had sponsored an appearance by Dr. Geoffrey Nicholson, the recently-retired 3M vice-president famous for his innovative work on the Post-it note. Dr. Nicholson has traveled widely, telling audiences of the many things 3M does to foster the company culture needed to sustain innovation. These friends had all attended and had been delighted by the speaker’s message. Their discouragement came from the fact that only about thirty people showed up and were badly outnumbered by the empty chairs.
One of the friends mused to our colleague, “I am afraid our people have become dulled to the idea that our management really wants us to innovate anything, no matter what they say.”
Our colleague reminded his friends of the need for a CEO and senior leaders to push innovation, by their personal commitment and actions, down through several layers of management below the CEO—the idea that senior leaders merely giving speeches about innovation won’t get the job done. He asked how many executive-level people were among the thirty attendees.
“Only one,” replied the friend, “Just one of the directors. But he left halfway through and told me that he had another important meeting and he was afraid he would be late.”
Then the friend asked, “What can we do to wake them up?”