Strategic Momentum

Innovation and Execution Excellence – Practices of High-Performance Organizations/Teams

Innovation and execution excellence is a big subject. As an operating executive for over 30 years, I have studied and applied best practices to improve my own organizational performance and the performance of other organizations.  I think it is misleading to talk about organizations in terms of this organization executes or innovates better than that organization, because it obscures a fundamental fact.  Organizations do not innovate or execute, people innovate and execute.  So, when you say this organization innovates and executes well, what does this really mean.  It means the people in that organization have installed effective processes and have developed the capability to work effectively together.  What emerges is innovation and execution excellence. 

Ultimately, all results are achieved by people following a process or processes. This is a very simple, but powerful concept. When you think about it, it cannot be any other way.  Everything we do in life is done by a process driven by a capability. This can be represented by the Process Cycle Model below. I was first introduced to this model in 1991, in a somewhat different form, by Brian Yost of Yost and Associates.

Before I explore the Process Cycle Model and its relationship to innovation and execution excellence, I want to articulate a number of axioms that provide additional context for this discussion.  I’ve learned these axioms over the years.  I call them axioms because, like in geometry, an axiom is a truth that does not have to be proved, but is used to prove other truths.

Here are the axioms which I am using to support this discussion on the practices used by high-performance organizations/teams to produce innovation and execution excellence. 

1. An organization is a system, of people and processes, perfectly designed to produce the results it is producing. The term organization can be applied at the enterprise, department and individual team level.
2. If you want to change the results, you have to change the design.
3. Results are produced by the individual and collective capabilities of the people driving a process or processes.
4. Language is generative not just descriptive. Our conversations produce results through the language-action relationship.
5. Everything that happens between people happens in the spoken and unspoken conversations people have or do not have with one another. In this context, we take a broad view of conversations.  To us, conversations are anything that provokes interpretation.  This includes anything we pick up with our senses as an active or passive participant in the conversation. This means conversations are never innocent.
6. Since everything that happens between people in an organization happens in conversations, the system design is held in place by the spoken and unspoken conversations.  However, it is the unspoken conversations that have the most gravitational pull creating the status quo.
7. To change the results you have to change the conversations.  This means having the courage to start new conversations, stop some conversations and change other conversations.

We have used the Process Cycle above for years as a lens and actionable framework to lead organizations to produce the results they actually want to produce, rather than continuing to produce the results they do not want.  High-Performance organizations/teams are able to see the relationship between their capabilities, processes and the results they are producing. Without this lens, it is difficult to make design changes.  You cannot intervene in a world you cannot see.

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The Nature of Breakthroughs – What does May 6, 1954; Oxford and Stories have in common?

May 6, 1954, on a windy spring day, Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds in Oxford England. He crossed the finish line with a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, and broke through the “four minute mile” barrier.  He demonstrated that the story about the impossibility of the four minute mile was only a myth, not a reality.

In less than 60 days, John Landy beat Roger Bannister’s record with a finishing time of 3 minutes and 57.9 seconds.  Within the year several other runners managed to run less than a four minute mile.  The current record holder is Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco, with a time of 3:43.13.

For years, the four minute mile eluded runners, and was thought to be impossible.  I am sure people documented the reasons for why this was impossible.  So, why try?  What lessons can we learn about the nature of breakthroughs?  Remember, in my last blog I said that a breakthrough is an extraordinary and unprecedented result.  Most people believe that breakthroughs are accidental.  This is conventional wisdom.  We believe breakthroughs can be created intentionally, if you know how to do it.  What stops you from creating a breakthrough?  YOU!

How many of us are constrained by our own stories of impossibility. 

Some say seeing is believing – I say, you have to believe to see

As you can see by looking at the video below, we proved this last Wednesday.  Approximately, thirty people came together to experience the power of belief for the purposes of creating a breakthrough.  This was to demonstrate that, properly lead by Eric Best Ph. D., they could bend metal spoons and forks with just the power of their mind.  You might say the demonstration was a trivial example.  However, it was not for the people who overcame their traditional belief system.  For them, it was a potentially life changing experience.  84% of the people were able to bend their spoon or fork. 

 Our belief system defines for us what is possible and impossible. Beliefs or what we call mindset (our rules of engagement) shape our actions because we see them as true.  Or worst, we don’t even see our beliefs, but nonetheless, they shape our behavior like an automatic pilot.  Our mindset shapes what we attempt or do not attempt to do in our everyday personal and professional life.

Success and failure begin and end in what we believe is possible.  Roger Bannister must have held the belief to make it happen.  Once he demonstrated the possibility, it was “easy” for others to make the commitment and to improve on his results.

The first step that a leader must take to create a breakthrough is to change his/her mindset and the mindset of his/her team.  Some time ago Eric changed his mindset.  Last Wednesday he changed the mindset of almost everyone in the room.

Just like the four minute mile many of the barriers that hold us back are self imposed.  They exist only in our mind.  

What are your four minute mile type stories, that you hold as true, but do not really know are true, that are holding you back in your personal and professional life?  If you at the event Wednesday could you have done this.